Rock Me On The Water
by karebear
Summary: There comes a time when you can't run anymore. [Anders-centric Kirkwall headcanon. AU-ish DA2.]
1. Chapter 1

Anders is cold. Alone and cold, and he's certainly felt this kind of miserableness before, but it feels different now. It feels new, and all the more miserable because of its newness. He huddles against the rock, slick with moss and seawater and probably worse things. It smells foul. If he is honest, it smells, overwhelmingly, like shit. He's seen a few things in his time that really disgusted him: the Deep Roads were home to plenty of spectacular horrors. He'd spent some time in the slums of Denerim and among the desperate homeless of Amaranthine, not to mention the refugee camps and caravans along the way. But this is the first place he's ever seen people forced to crowd into the sewers because there is nowhere else for them to scrape a living. This is Darktown. This is Kirkwall. He hates this city with every fiber of his being.

Hunger gnaws at his belly, and it churns into a heavy knot of pain made worse by fear. He is _afraid_. He is no stranger to stealing food, and money, when he needs to. He'd spent weeks on the road, lifting crops from the fields and coin from the pockets of market-goers. But the guards here pay far more attention, overwhelmed as they are with floods of refugees from Blight-stricken Ferelden. Anders is one of them. He tells himself that, over and over. It's not really a lie. He doesn't have to work very hard to look downtrodden or lost. But he has to remind himself not to draw attention. It's _hard_. He'd never realized before how - as much as he'd hated the Circle for not letting him _do _anything - magic was woven into every part of his life there. Even when they'd taken away his ability to access mana, he could still _feel _it, surrounding him, a close pressure. It was woven into the very air of the Tower. How could it not be, with everyone in the place both drawing on mana and creating it just by their very presence?

Even though they were punished for it, isolated and controlled and threatened, the Circle, in every real sense, gave Anders and the other children who'd grown up with him their identities as mages. Without that, he wasn't anything. _It's your fault_, whispers the voice in his head, a voice he was _very _familiar with after spending almost a full year alone in a cell. The voice of his own doubts and uncertainties is as loud and obnoxious as any demon. Worse, even. More insidious, harder to fight back against. He can't escape his own thoughts and he doesn't want to, because the only way to do that is to die, and he won't let that happen. But he still grinds his teeth. "Shut up!" he mutters.

A few feet down the alley, a woman with tangled dark hair glares at him suspiciously. Anders swallows hard, and ducks his head. Don't draw attention. He's _not _crazy. "I'm not crazy," he says, slightly louder than necessary. The woman smiles, and it seems genuine. Anders feels a little bit of warmth. He relaxes a little. The knot in his stomach begins to untangle. He smiles too.

"Where're you from?" the woman asks him, with a noticeable Ferelden accent. It's the slow, rural speech of the farmlands, but there's a harshness behind it, enough for Anders to recognize that she's spent enough time in Kirkwall and cities like it.

The question isn't simple. Not for him and maybe, not for anyone. Amaranthine is a safe enough answer, he figures. But no, that's not right either. He doubts the Wardens would follow him here (_They wouldn't_, that voice in his head insists, that desperate, angry voice. _She__ wouldn't_). But he still doesn't say Amaranthine. He isn't sure if that's because it feels too much like a lie or if it's that residual need to protect himself by not giving anything away. He just shrugs, and shakes his head. "Nowhere," he says. Which feels more or less true.

The woman raises an eyebrow. "Well, aren't you mysterious?" She looks him over, with an intent stare that Anders wants to pull away from. It's obvious that she's intelligent and focused, with the kind of eyes that don't miss anything. "I'd wager you're a soldier, eh?"

Anders shakes his head, instinctively. He's not. He hates fighting. "I'm..." he starts, but then stops himself. He's not anything. Just a ghost.

He begins to turn away, already unsettled by the way this woman's eyes are tracking his every movement. He huddles against the cold wind that blows in like icy knives off the water, cutting through to the bone the second he moves away from the dubious safety provided by the walls of rock.

He stuffs his hands into his pockets, and his fingers close around the magebane hidden there. It's a little, _tiny_ vial, all he has left. He doesn't want to use it, for many reasons. He doesn't want to use it up, not until he _really _needs it. But he's also still afraid of it. Even when he's the one dosing it, on purpose, it still _hurts_. And it brings back the memories of all the templars' worst tortures. But it can buy him a little bit of safety, and so he won't let go of it, not when the long shadows of the Gallows walls loom over him, caging him in even from across the narrow channel of rough water that cuts off that island.

He can't trust himself, yet, not to reach for mana if it's there. He can't control that reflex any more than a drowning man could stop himself from reaching for air. Thus, the magebane. He squeezes that vial in his pocket because it stops his fingers from twitching. This nervous need to run _will _get him caught.

"You hungry?" the woman asks, and Anders jumps. His heart pounds in his chest, and he is paralyzed, caught between the desire to run and the urge to fight. The woman stares him down with the kind of cautious curiosity that is the only way to stay alive in Kirkwall's rough streets. Anders almost says no. But although he does not know if he can trust her, one glance around the desperate shantytowns clustered near the docks proves that other options for food are unlikely to come around any time soon. So he nods.

"Well, it ain't much," the woman tells him, honestly. "But it sure is better than nothing." She rummages around in her traveling clothes, pulling a bit of hard tack from a hidden pocket.

Around them, other refugees begin to push in closer, spying a bit of food and willing to kill for it. Anders can feel the threat, a heightened sense of anger in the air. He holds tightly to the biscuit, and his eyes dart wildly from person to person. There are more than he can easily count. The Kirkwall Guard had shoved them all in together, and anyone who complained received the same response: they're welcome to try their luck out on the open sea, if they've got the coin to buy passage on another ship. No one has the coin, that much is obvious. But they are still better off than those on the ships still arriving, holds loaded with people who won't even be let into the city. Sometimes the captains dump the refugees anyway, leaving them to fend for themselves on the other side of Kirkwall's gated walls. Others don't bother, they simply turn around to try their luck at another port, one with a thriving slave market.

So they are stuck, languishing here without home or work, but unwilling to leave. Though older people are squeezed into these alleys the same as Anders and his unexpected new friend, it's the younger ones - boys ten and twelve years old - who approach him now, with lean, hardened bodies and narrowed eyes. They are the ones still young enough to fight for survival. Anders has watched these gangs of feral children beating people in the streets, sometimes to death, to get at scraps that a dog wouldn't touch. And he hadn't done a thing to stop them. What could he do, without bringing dangerous attention?

There's the part of him that wants to give up his food, because they're just kids, and he can go hungry. But this isn't Ferelden, where he could do something simple to help someone else and then move on. If he shows that he's willing to just give up whatever they ask for, it'll only make him a permanent target.

He can feel power and potential stirring inside him, his body reacting in its natural way to his very real fear. The magebane in his system is fading away. But instead of bringing relief, the sensation of power returning only makes things worse. His head hurts, and his muscles tense up. Exhaustion and starvation and raw panic blend together to make him jumpy. His training as a Grey Warden combines with the reflexes ingrained in him in the Circle, voices that scream at him to fight. He forces himself to breathe, but it grows more difficult as adrenaline overwhelms his ability to calm himself, or think rationally.

The dark-haired woman steps out in front of him. Anders flinches as her hand brushes against his arm, as she pushes him back out of the way. "Get out of here!" she barks, confronting these children without a hint of fear. Anders swallows hard.

The tallest of the boys spits onto the ground, but he hesitates. He watches the woman with uncertain eyes. He does not turn to leave, but he does not advance. One of the other boys doesn't feel the same sense of deference. He lunges forward, launching himself at the woman, and Anders. He knocks her to the ground but ignores her. Anders is the one with the food. The child leaps at him, kicking and clawing and scratching. His small body is a hard target to grab onto, and he fights dirty, moving fast, aiming to quickly incapacitate. His fingers jab at Anders' eyes, and the mage tries to throw the boy off of him, but small fingers close around his throat. Fireworks of pain explode across his body as the boy's companions join the fray. They pummel and kick, doing to Anders what he's seen them do to dozens of others.

It's no longer about the bread, which has fallen to the ground and been trampled into crumbs, a small bit snatched by an observant toddler who streaked away fast as lightning. No, now it's simply about releasing their rage. These boys will take control in the only way available to them, burning up their impotent fury against a helpless target.

But Anders isn't helpless. He is weak, and afraid, and out of practice. His head spins, and he lashes out with frantic desperation. He grabs at the boy who is on top of him, his foot pressing down, impossibly painfully, on Anders' groin. His knee digs into Anders' stomach. Anders' groans. Darkness crawls at the edges of his vision, but he _lashes out_, with raw, uncontrolled magic. A ripple of kinetic force blasts outward, pushing his attackers away. One of them hits the nearby wall with a sickening crack. Anders hears screaming, but he slowly becomes aware that he cannot feel the pain that signals a continuing attack.

He shakes his head, and his vision clears, although his breathing is still labored and heavy. Inside, he is empty, shaken. He begins to realize what he's just done, and total panic overwhelms him. He runs.

His breathing comes in painful gasps as he carries himself as far away from the scene of his crime as he can get. He runs blindly, without a care for the people he runs over in the process. His feet slip on the water-slick streets, and he trips over a rotting board, landing hard. Someone grabs his arm, hard, and he cannot pull away. There is nothing left in him to fight with. He spins around to see that same dark-haired woman. Memories mix into his brain: another woman, another fight. She hadn't been scared of him either. She had let him kill her. He shakes his head, tears pooling up in his eyes as he squeezes them shut. "No!" he murmurs. "No, no, no..." The image of Rylock's sightless eyes bore into his head, accusing. His fault. He can't control himself. They were right all along, _she _was right. He deserves to be locked up. He wraps his arms tightly around himself, too weak to stand. Too weak to fight anymore.

His head snaps backward as a painful slap lands on his cheek. He pulls away, afraid of this woman's touch. But he literally up against a wall, completely drained, too tired to run.

"I'm not crazy," he repeats, completely unconvincingly. His voice is heavy with exhaustion, slurring his speech. He sounds drunk. He wishes that he was.

The woman sits next to him. "You're a mage," she says simply, and with about as much care as if she were remarking on the weather. Anders is still exhausted, but at least he isn't seeing things anymore. And the only voice he's hearing is the one that's actually talking to him. He feels like someone has suddenly doused him with a bucket of cold water: the danger he is in is all he can think about. The certainty of capture always has brought a strange kind of clarity to the end of his panicked flights.

"Templars," he murmurs, trying to articulate the threat. But the woman doesn't seem at all bothered.

"Eat," she tells him, acting as though she doesn't hear him at all. She pulls another bit of bread out of her travel sack. Anders can see that there's nothing else left in there, but she won't take no for an answer. So he eats, tearing into the scraps of bread like the starving man he is. It's not enough to satisfy him. It wouldn't be enough for even a normal man. For someone with a Grey Warden appetite, the tiny meal is only a terrible tease. Pain still rips at his stomach. His skin is pale, the veins visible underneath are unnaturally dark. He knows that if he could see his reflection, his eyes would be sunken and bloodshot.

"You look terrible," the woman says gently, and he can only nod. And wonder why she's helping him. And wonder why no one seems to be chasing after either of them anymore. "Feel better?" she asks. Anders swallows the last of the crumbs, and nods, even though he's mostly lying. The look on the woman's face proves he's not fooling anyone, but she must also realize by now that she's given up everything she can. More than she should've. "Come on, then," she orders, with the sound of a woman expecting to be obeyed. Anders is already on his feet and following her before he realizes that it's the same tone that had slowed the gang leader at the beginning of the fight.

"Who _are _you?" he asks, curiosity mixed with outright awe.

"My name is Lirene. I take care of people around here." She pushes open a hastily bolted door that opens into a Darktown shack like any other, walls formed mostly of shipping crates and other miscellaneous debris. Anders has always been impressed by how resourceful the slum-dwellers of most cities are when it comes to constructing their houses. "You'd be surprised how far a little kindness can take you," Lirene insists as she practically shoves Anders into what must be her home.

On a cot in the corner lies the boy Anders had thrown against the wall. His wounds have been cleaned up, though not bandaged. Blood and bruises stand out even against his sun-darkened skin. Though his eyes are open and track Anders' movement as he approaches, he doesn't react to any of the conversation. He doesn't even move when Anders sits on the cot next to him. His skin feels disturbingly cold when Anders takes his hand. He sends a bit of calming magic into the boy, using the touch as a conduit. The child relaxes, leaning against Anders, without fear or protest. Anders gently lays him down on the cot, watching him sleep.

"What happened to him?" he asks softly.

"He's high on Haze," Lirene replies. "Most of them are. It kills the hunger, for a while."

Anders sighs. He combs his fingers through the boy's hair, trailing flickers of blue light as he does so. Looking at him like this, all he can see is a vulnerable child, one that he hurt, and could've killed. He can feel the corrupted lyrium inside the boy's body. It's the only reason he's able to heal the child; without the added boost from the drug, he'd be too drained to manage even something as simple as this.

"Who controls the drugs?" he asks, as the worst of the young gang member's cuts and scrapes fade.

Lirene shrugs. "Coterie. And there's a few other small-timers of course."

"And the Guard doesn't do anything to stop them? Or the Chantry?" The Chantry is supposed to control the lyrium supply. There'd be no way to make these dangerous derivative cocktails for sale on the streets if they were doing their job. Anders has no love for the Chantry, but it infuriates him that they can expend so much energy controlling _people, _mages who have done nothing wrong, only to let criminals profit from the suffering of others, suffering caused by their lack of control over a physical _object_ that they are supposed to keep safely locked away.

Lirene laughs at that, a harsh bark with no humor in it. "You think the Chantry cares about what happens down here? Don't be stupid."

Anders nods, conceding the point. Their apathy is what lets him hide, after all. Well, their apathy, and the occasional short-term alliance with a sympathetic civilian. It's always been that way, since he was a teenager. Ducking templars here isn't any different from doing the same thing in the villages of Ferelden. Right?

He holds Lirene's gaze, trying to read her. He likes to think he's fairly good instincts regarding people, that he can figure out who to trust. But it's harder when there's that part of him that won't stop insisting (with proof that he doesn't want to remember) that he can't trust _anybody. _"Why are you helping me?" he asks carefully.

"Because you need help," she replies immediately. As if there's nothing else to it.

Anders doesn't believe it. Not for a second. He raises an eyebrow. "And?" People aren't just nice for free, in his experience. _Especially_ not in this city. There's always a catch.

Lirene sinks into the chair across the table from him. It's the first time he's been able to pick up on the should've-been-obvious fact that she's just as exhausted and hungry as anyone else here. "And I've seen what you can do," she admits. "The people here need you."

He shakes his head before she even finishes speaking. No way. "Do you have any idea what you're asking?" His voice shakes, just a little, as he tries to make her _understand_.

It's true that this woman helped him when she had no reason to, it's true that she's not the one turning him in. But if she's even half as well-informed about this city as she seems to be, she must know the kind of bounty Kirkwall's Knight Commander is offering on any information leading to the capture of a mage.

"Do you think they haven't already run to the templars, boy? As many as saw you out there? _Someone _has."

It's true. He knows it's true. That's what scares him. He's already started running through all of his possible options. He's still a Warden. _Maybe _that can save him. It's a long shot, but it's possible, isn't it? He's never been the type to just give up, he's always been able to talk a good game. Maybe, maybe, maybe... he turns the wheels over in his head, but his stomach still hurts. He can't shake the feeling that his luck has run out again, because it _always does._

"I can protect you," Lirene tells him.

"No you can't!" he snaps. She's already more involved than he wants her to be. He's sick of other people getting hurt because of him.

"I _can_. But only if you want me to."

Anders finally nods. What other choice does he have, really?


	2. Chapter 2

"So tell me the truth," Lirene insists. She's leaning against the slick, moss-covered stone that makes up one wall of a half-cave structure shored up by some rotting boards. It'll be Anders' home, if he wants it. If he can make it habitable, which he is beginning to seriously doubt. "What are you doing here?"

Anders snorts softly as he begins piling up the worst of the debris strewn about the floor. A runaway mage like him coming to Kirkwall is _suicidal_, and they both know it. It's a totally fair question.

"I have a friend in the city," he says softly, more a reminder to himself than an answer to her question.

Lirene shakes her head, her eyes wide with disbelief. "It sure looks to me like this friend is taking real good care of you."

Anders stops. Anger and exhaustion war inside him. He still holds sharp bits of broken metal in his hands. They prick at his fingers. "Shut up," he snarls. "You don't know anything about me. Or him."

Lirene says nothing. She concentrates on gathering up the few salvageable bits of trash she might be able to use. Her willingness to not ask questions is one of the things about her that Anders already appreciates and is impressed by. They work for a while, in not-exactly-comfortable silence. Anders scrubs down the few scattered empty crates that will serve as the little bit of furniture he needs. The past couple of days have been long and cold and draining, but the templars have not come to hunt him down. He still keeps the vial of magebane in his pocket, just in case, although he also knows that if they really are looking for him, he likely won't have enough warning for it to matter. And he knows it's Lirene's doing, although he still doesn't know how she has power enough to keep him hidden. Or why she wants to.

He sits down, perching on the edge of the still-damp crate. "Thank you," he murmurs.

Lirene squeezes his shoulder gently. "You let me know if you need anything. I'll be back to check on you in the morning."

Anders nods, still listless and tired. He watches the door slam shut behind her.

Outside, the wind blows fierce and freezing. The sunlight seems to last for only a precious few hours in the middle of these winter days. And only a fraction of that reaches down to where they are. So even though it's barely mid-afternoon, he sits alone in the dark.

He takes a deep breath, then blows it out. He feels the mana stirring around him and inside him. It fills him with a warm charge, an energy that needs to _go _somewhere. So he latches on to it, and shapes it, in his mind and in reality. He plays with flickering sparks of fire, watching them dance in his palm. It's an exercise that takes serious effort, for him, but it helps him to not-think. He uses only a trickle of mana, so little that it would be impossible for anyone to track, even if they were sitting right on top of him. But even this little bit helps him to relax a little. He can feel the knots of tension in his shoulders beginning to untangle themselves. The weight he'd been carrying, the weight of fear and uncertainty and not-being-good-enough, eases slightly, as he loses himself in that fire. He dumps all that emotional energy into the spell, focusing on _making_. It works for a little while, but not long enough. Questions and doubts begin to creep in at the edges of his consciousness. He could push past them if he needed to, but his connection to the Fade these days is weak and fragile, and he tells himself it's better to stop while he's ahead. _You're just scared, _nags that anxious voice in his own head. He tells that voice to shut up. He has a good reason to be scared. He has a lot of good reasons.

He lets the fire snap out, but not before lighting a few scraps of wood to keep himself warm. He watches them crackle and burn, and he pulls out a few scraps of parchment and a stub of charcoal that he'd dug up from somewhere and held onto, and he begins to draw. Years-old memories rush to the surface, and he sketches out those images. His fingers trace over the rips in the paper, causing the smooth arching lines to trip and stutter. He draws clear bright eyes and carefully groomed hair. He fills in the shape of muscular arms that had once wrapped themselves tightly around him when he couldn't sleep. He gnaws on his lower lip as he sketches the fingers that had once teased him. He adds a lazy smile to Karl's face, one that matches his own. His breathing quickens as he draws, and he has to put the picture down unfinished. It's too hard to think about this. Too much time has passed. Too much, and not enough at the same time. He'd never been sure if... _whatever _he'd felt for Karl was even returned. Mages in the Tower, even when they had sex, didn't generally talk about their _feelings_. He didn't know, until he'd read Karl's letters, that there was something lasting in their brief liaison. Or at least, that Karl might have wanted it to last.

He'd burned Karl's notes, but not before he'd memorized everything about them: the familiar curls and sharp lines of his too-close-together handwriting, the visceral panic that seemed to bleed through the words, even though everything he'd actually written was totally benign. He'd asked for help, a kind of calling, a pull that Anders couldn't resist because he could feel the desperation hidden in the simple things, words and pictures that are your only way of communicating with an outside world that couldn't hear you. Except that, somehow, Karl had been able to smuggle his words out, and get them to someone who _would _listen. Of course Anders had to come here. Even though he has no idea what he can do to help his friend. Nothing, probably. Just as much nothing as Karl, or Rhyanon, or anybody else could do for him when he asked.

He falls asleep eventually, though that sleep is fragmented and restless. Old memories work their way into his dreams, he can feel the lingering ghosts of warmth and touch and comfort; he remembers whispering secrets. And he remembers hiding things. Making plans. Guilt sinks into his stomach like a rock, and it still hurts when he wakes up. The last time he'd run away from the Tower, it had been with an explosive burst of anger, after Karl had been sent away. Almost three years ago. How much has changed since then? Yet Karl hadn't given up on him. There is one last connection tying him to the Circle, pulling him to Kirkwall, a leash that just won't break. And then he feels bad for thinking of Karl as only that. He owes the man so much more.

He pushes himself up and wraps himself in as many layers of clothing as he can, to brave the pre-dawn winter. He walks along the water, at the very edges of the docks. The waves churn in dark swirls that crash against the docks and send up freezing spray. Sporadic patches of ice make the walk more treacherous than usual.

He stops before he's even made it out of Darktown, to duck into one of its many hidden corners and finish off that last vial of magebane. A few yards away, a wild-eyed addict nods knowingly. Anders avoids his gaze. He crushes the empty vial beneath his foot. It helps to distract him from the pain as his body and mind rebel against the poison he's just ingested. He has to fight the rising panic as he struggles with the very real sensation that he can't breathe anymore. His fingers scrabble at the rock wall behind him until he finds a stone large enough to lock his fingers around, giving him something solid to hold onto. He concentrates on gathering air into his lungs, with slow, even breaths. He counts, slowly, running up the numbers in his mind because that's always worked to calm him. He feels slightly better by the time he gets to thirty. He reminds himself that he's not dying, and that as much as the magebane dulls his senses and slows his reactions, it's possibly one of the very few things that will continue his ongoing trend of not dying.

There is something important that he has to do. He concentrates on that. There is a meeting he has to get to. He's been planning it for a long time. He has to be on time. Something very, very bad will happen.

Even the wind seems to push him forward, biting even through his layers of clothing. He ducks his head, tucking himself into as tight a ball as he can in an effort to stay warm, and he concentrates on walking.

The claustrophobic press of Darktown, with its makeshift buildings all falling on top of each other, begins to ease. It doesn't happen all at once, but the streets eventually widen, and shadows give way to open sky. The weather is still cold and miserable, but it seems less so up here in a part of Kirkwall that seems, somehow, more real. There is a life to this place that the people of Darktown have forgotten. Even at this time of day, so early that it barely qualifies as morning, there are people moving about. There are merchants sweeping out market stalls, and children running through the streets. He hears humming and laughter, and these people do not move with the violent cruelty that is all he's seen in the sewers and refugee camps. It seems like they come from another world entirely, one that Anders has occasionally visited but is not entirely sure he knows how to fit into.

Still, their mood is contagious. Anders feels a burst of optimism, blossoming outward from his heart. A kind of vibrant energy reaches out to his fingers and his feet. His head seems to clear a little. His pace quickens. He smiles, and even begins to whistle, and, except for a few stray, nagging doubts, he isn't even afraid. His confidence blooms as he ascends the wide stone steps to the Chantry's front entrance, and no one even looks at him twice.

He pushes open the heavy wooden door with cautious slowness. It creaks and slams behind him despite his best efforts. The echoes of that slamming take a long time to fade away. The place is nearly empty. A few pink-clothed women wander, lighting candles and dusting statues. Most of them are young, barely teenagers. Initiates, still sleepy, performing their chores by rote. Anders smiles as he passes them, not _at _them, but at his memory of once being where they are. A kind of confusion stirs inside his stomach, a sharp, nagging pain, a question that wants to be asked but will not fully form. Something about sides, some warning bell that tells him he should be afraid - not of them, but of what they might become. Anders does his best to ignore those unsettling clouds of thoughts that won't make themselves clear enough to be understood. He makes his way toward the front of the chapel, where a man sits, tucked into the corner of the very first bench.

Even from the back, Karl's shape is familiar. Anders grins, and he barely stops himself from breaking into a run, shouting and wrapping his arms around the man. He laughs softly as his plans to tease the man bring words, already formed, to his lips. But he hesitates. There is still that tiny bit of uncertainty, that fear that Karl will not forgive him for moving on without him, that the distance that has been forced between them might not be able to be closed. It's happened before. And every time it happens, it hurts more. Karl's the one that asked for help this time, but Anders finds, as he slips into the pew beside the man, that he's about to ask for advice, the same way he had when he was still just a teenage kid, equal parts cocky and afraid. He's a lot less cocky these days.

"Are you okay?" he asks softly, still not looking at his old friend. It's a comfortable vague question, one he'd never answered, but one that still - always - needed to be asked. It was a way of gently beginning the kind of conversation that could never take place solely in words. It was a way of saying _I'm scared_, without actually having to say it, and as he formed the words that were more real than the jokes he'd wanted to tell only seconds earlier, Anders went somewhere else. Only in his head, obviously. In reality, he was very definitely still sitting on the first bench in a long row of them inside the Kirkwall Chantry. He was sitting next to Karl. In his head, he was also sitting next to Karl, but in his head they were both sitting on a thin, only-marginally-comfortable mattress pressed up next to a mostly unused bookcase. In his head, Karl was tracing his fingers down Anders' naked back, and not-asking the same question: _Are you okay?_

The images of his memory didn't last very long; a few seconds, at most. But the feelings linger, clinging to Anders like a hazy fog. He reaches out for Karl's hand, but the other man didn't react. "Look, I'm sorry," Anders murmurs. He waits for Karl to say something. His friend had always been the quiet type, but this feels different. Frightening. Anders wraps his arms around his knees, an old protective instinct, and he finally glances up, to look at Karl. He braces himself for whatever disappointed, not-quite-angry reaction the man is almost certain to have. Times like this, it's obvious that Karl had once been his _teacher_, capable of lecturing the same as any of them. Worse, because Anders actually cared to listen to him.

"You've come," Karl says, his voice oddly flat.

Anders nods. "'Course I did." He voice comes out hoarse, and very quiet. A shiver runs down his spine.

"Why?" Karl asks. It's that old teacher voice, probing questions, trying to make Anders _think_, to see the flaws in his rash, illogical actions. The implied condemnation stings, but Anders is just as stubborn and competitive as he'd always been.

"Because you asked!" he snaps. He waits for Karl to reply, but his impatience grows, the same as it always has, while he waits for the other man to collect his thoughts. "Dammit, Karl, look at me!"

He is _so _afraid of rejection. But he _asked_. Anders clings to that knowledge, hoping that it means he hasn't permanently lost one of the only real friends he's ever had. Karl looks up, responding to the command. He stares at Anders with deadened eyes.

A cold shock roots Anders to the spot. He frowns in confusion, trying to reconcile the visual evidence and the emotional _lack _of evidence_, _lack of anything. He tries and fails to come up with a way that this makes sense, because it doesn't. It hurts too much to make sense. Karl is there but not there, and waves of pain crash over Anders in layers that hurt with as much force as a physical blow.

"What happened?" he asks, stupidly. He is barely able to choke out the words.

"I am Tranquil," Karl replies, without the irritation he should have displayed at the obviousness of the question. Anders is more chilled than ever. A choking sob fails to work its way out of his throat. Hot tears sting his cheeks.

"You are crying," Karl observes. Anders nods.

As he tries to wrap his mind around the pain he's feeling, he remembers how desperately Karl had once tried to protect him from getting hurt. Rhyanon had cared too, but she'd always viewed the templars' punishments as inevitable. Sometimes, she broke the rules at his side, but Karl had been the first one - the _only _one - to insist that it didn't have to happen like this. He'd seen something in Anders other than an irredeemable screw-up. He was also the only one who'd told Anders, out loud, that he didn't deserve the punishments he endured. And now that fist squeezing around Anders' heart tightens, cold as ice, as he realizes how _subversive _that would sound to the Chantry. To say, out loud, that mages don't deserve to be punished... it might be the most dangerous thing anyone could ever say.

He sees Karl in a whole new way, now, only after it's already too late to do anything to save him. He breaks down completely, his shoulders shaking as he sobs.

"You should leave this place," Karl tells him, in a terrifyingly emotionless monotone.

"Come with me," Anders begs him.

But Karl shakes his head. "I should not. My presence would be missed."

_No. No, no, no. _Anders tries to think around the denial screaming in his head. _This can't happen_. _It isn't __fair_.

He can fix it. He has to be able to fix it. Mages can will things into being, right? Karl is the one who told him that in the first place.

Anders screams, unintelligible, overwhelming, an animal yell that still isn't strong enough to vent his rage and pain. He grabs Karl's arm, tightly enough to hurt. He needs Karl to listen to him, to really see him. He needs him to _be there_.

The nearest of the Chantry Initiates, a tiny wisp of a girl, watches the confrontation with wide eyes, but she makes no attempt to interfere.

"Let go," Karl says simply.

Anders does, immediately. It shouldn't be possible for his stomach to hurt anymore, but it does as soon as he realizes that he's hurting his friend. He can't. He won't.

He and Rhyanon and Jowan had made a promise to each other, one night in the kitchens, when they were just drunk enough to talk, out loud, about their reality. They all swore they'd rather be dead than Tranquil. But that was a long time ago, years before Anders started willingly ingesting magebane to increase his odds of survival. And Karl hadn't been part of that pact.

"Are you happy?" Anders whispers. He immediately wants to take it back, because by definition, the Tranquil _can't _be happy. But he still can't reconcile his knowledge of the Tranquil with his memories of _Karl_, who, even if he'd never been wildly, excitedly ecstatic the way Anders wanted him to be, was often content, in his own quiet way.

"No," Karl replies. His brows are knotted in confusion as he struggles, probably, to figure out why Anders looks displeased about his honest response. He waits for an interminably long time before speaking again. "You should go," he repeats, and Anders knows more than ever that Karl is right. He nods, still struggling to swallow over the lump in his throat that won't go away. He doesn't even bother trying to stop his crying.

Karl reaches out, his fingers closing over Anders'. They still feel warm. Anders can feel the heat of the blood pumping underneath the pale flesh. "Do not be upset," Karl insists. "I am okay."


	3. Chapter 3

The walk back to Darktown is long and lonely. The shadows seem colder than ever before. Anders can't feel anything but the heavy weight of guilt and regret swirling in the pit of his stomach. His footsteps carry him forward, but it's more inertia than anything else keeping him moving. In his mind, insistent whispers pull at him, forcing him to stop every few steps and remind himself that he cannot go back to the Chantry. Karl will not be there anymore, and even if he were, there is nothing Anders can do to change things. He'd only get himself killed. There's a certain comfort to the familiar awareness that he could so easily die. But not today, he tells himself, even though he _can't_ exactly pinpoint a good reason. Why _not _today?

It takes him longer than it should to notice the tears still splashing down his cheeks. He wipes them away slowly, and keeps to the emptier alleyways.

Footsteps clatter behind him, and he whirls around, barely managing to keep himself from falling as he does so. "Thank the Maker I found you!" Lirene gasps, as she pushes a semi-conscious young woman into his arms. "Where were you anyway?"

Anders blinks, struggling to come to terms with the sudden overwhelming rush of sensory input. He catches the girl awkwardly, and it takes effort not to let her fall. It feels as though all of the strength has left his body. The young woman in his arms lets out a pitiful sound halfway between a gasp and a moan; a painful, gurgling breath. Anders is frighteningly aware of the warmth of her blood pooling onto his clothes.

"I can't," he chokes out. He pleads helplessly with Lirene, who offers him no way out whatsoever. She's pushing open his door, not bothering to be subtle about it's fidgety lock, which is probably irreparably broken now. The girl still struggles in Anders' arms.

Flickers of something intensely, dangerously familiar ignite around her. Anders feels his breath catch somewhere in his middle before the air gets all the way in or out. He stumbles into the darkened room and drops the girl onto the table, wincing slightly at how hard she hits the unforgiving surface. She moans again, more weakly this time, and Anders grabs her hand.

She squeezes back, and he finds himself talking to her, in fragmented sentences meant to reassure himself as much as her. He draws in a sharp breath as he feels her instinctively pulling mana from him to reinforce her body's attempts to heal itself. It _hurts, _bringing tears to his eyes. He grits his teeth and breathes, quick and shallow, fighting the urge to scream. The magebane still in his system is doing its job, blocking him from touching the Fade. It doesn't stop him from feeling the ripples of it in her, though. And she's _strong_. That kind of power, unguided, could hurt more than in helps.

Anders can't focus on anything but the painful chaotic energy of her mana mixing with his. He shuts down, throwing up a block so that she can't take anything more from him. And he forces himself to breathe, slow and deep.

"What happened?" he asks Lirene, as he puts pressure on the deep gash cutting across the girl's belly. She cries out, still only half-conscious, but she begins to kick and fight. Anders can feel the buildup of power gathering around her. He curses and presses her shoulder down, needing to keep her still.

"Give me that potion!" he snaps, pointing to the neatly organized shelf behind her. "The green one." Lirene grabs it and hands it to him, and Anders' tilts the unconscious girl's head back, propping her mouth open. The dark green syrup slides down her throat, and Anders prays that she won't resist it. His panic ebbs as she falls into an unnatural sleep. The drug will ease the pain, and prevent her from casting. "Looks like a knife fight," he says softly. He glances up to Lirene for confirmation, although he really doesn't need it.

True to form, she doesn't feel the need to tell him what he already knows. Instead, she makes herself useful, digging through his cabinets for bandages.

"Did you know she's a mage?" Anders asks, as he takes the strips of cloth. His voice is starting to regain a bit more insistent force. It's like he's beginning to wake up. It's not a good feeling. Hostile anger stirs in his muscles, and he's practically shaking with the effort it takes to hold back his urge to punch something.

"There were rumors," Lirene replies softly. "Athenril's pet firestarter."

The girl is still bleeding. Her life, as it spills over Anders' fingers, is sticky and dark, almost black. Her body begins to convulse, reacting to the pressure as he tries desperately to close that wound, to knit her flesh back together. Her pulse, in those brief moments when he can feel it flickering against her skin, is thready and weak. Her flesh is too pale, even for someone living the sunless existence of Darktown.

Anders dumps all of his rage and frustration into pushing past the torturous pressure of the magebane still punishing him for attempting to reach for the Fade. He can feel the mana inside the girl, bright and raw It sings to him, swirling in response to his presence. He latches on to that pull. It hurts. like. hell. He bites down hard on his lower lip, so hard he can taste blood, and he _pushes_, physically and magically. He can't control his magic, and it feels worse - more panic-inducing - than not being able to feel mana at all. All he can do is beg, with desperate fragmented words that might even come close to being prayer. He needs this to work. He prays that he can be enough.

His vision begins to darken at the edges. He feels an intense burst of pain, like an explosion. He can't see much of anything beyond flashes of bright light. He thinks he can feel his fingers slipping away from the intense heat of the girl's skin. He feels something soft sliding under his head, and then there's nothing but darkness.

When he blinks his eyes open again, it takes a minute to come to terms with the way his body feels: sensitive, and raw. Not pain, but the absence of it, opening him up to the sensations of reality that the magebane overpowered. The light coming in through the cracks in the wall, meager though it is, is still too bright. The texture of the rough blanket clutched in his hand is almost painfully scratchy.

"Here," Lirene insists, shoving a bowl of oatmeal into his hands. "Eat."

Anders licks his lips experimentally. His throat is painfully dry. His head feels heavy. But he knows he has to get something into his stomach.

"Thank you," he whispers. His voice comes out more hoarsely than he'd intended.

"Shut up and eat," Lirene tells him.

"Where is she?" Anders asks.

Lirene shrugs. "Not here," she says simply. As though that's all there is to it.

"You let her go?!" Anders erupts.

"I wasn't going to stop her. Hawk can make her own decisions same as you."

Anders frowns. "Hawk?"

Lirene just shrugs. "It's what they call her."

It's a gang name. Anders isn't stupid enough to pretend it isn't. The girl was dying in his arms last night, and now she's... what? Thrown back into the streets? She shouldn't even be able to _stand_. And she's a _mage_. He can still feel the imprint of her mana, like a fingerprint left inside him. It'll fade, probably soon, but for now it's still there, like an echo.

"Do you have any idea what kind of danger she's in?"

"No more than you. Less, I'd wager. She can look after herself."

"So can I!"

"That isn't what I meant and you damn well know it. She can use those knives she carries."

Anders blinks. He doesn't remember the girl carrying knives, but then he doesn't remember much beyond frantically trying to stabilize her and stop the bleeding. Trying, and mostly failing. Limited by the magebane inside him, all he'd been able to do was keep her from accidentally killing herself, if he'd even done that much. Any real healing that may have taken place didn't come from him.

"Where can I find her?"

Lirene fixes him with a level stare. "You know what I've learned? If you let yourself get obsessed with saving everyone, you'll blind yourself to what they actually need."

Anders is in no mood to listen to platitudes. A restless energy fills him. Lirene, though, is paying little attention to him. Instead, she appears to be rearranging the meager contents of his cabinet. "You're going to need better furniture," she announces calmly. Anders blinks. "And supplies. Medicines and things."

"What are you talking about?"

Lirene sighs, as if her response should be more than obvious, and maybe it should be. She sets down the elfroot she's holding, and rests her hand on Anders' arm. He's suddenly aware of his own body's motion: the way his fingers are tapping on his leg, the fact that he's been standing, moving - _pacing_, even - ever since he'd washed his bowl and run out of things to do. Lirene's touch fills him with a contact heat. He stills himself, and stares at his worn boots.

Lirene rests her other hand on his cheek, drawing his eyes to hers. "Callin needed a healer," she says calmly. "And she's far from the only one who does, or will."

Anders nods, knowing Lirene is right. He watches the relief evident on her features, the tired smile that lights up her face, as he gives his tacit agreement. She lets go of him again, breaking the moment, and Anders watches as she busies herself cleaning up after the daily messes he doesn't bother with. She runs her hand over the dust that gathers in deep layers over the table.

Anders tucks himself into the one rickety chair once again. He runs his hand through his hair. "You sound like you know her," he says. Although he's mostly talking to the table as he runs his finger over the deep grooves and knots in the wood, Lirene answers anyway.

"As well as I know any of them," she admits. She sits on a crate across from him, and sets two new cups of tea on the table. "It's all rumors and secrets down here. I seen her grow up a bit though. Helped her out of a few tight spots." Lirene turns around and notices the untouched bowl still sitting in front of Anders. _Eat_," she orders, yet again.

He does. The oatmeal slides down his throat and fills his belly with pleasant warmth. He scrapes the bowl clean within moments. With his basic needs now met, his body is less and less able to distract him from the reality of his recent hours. He pushes himself to his feet, struggling to order his thoughts into some kind of sense, searching for answers. His lip is scabbed over where he'd bitten it. His clothes are still stained with blood.

"Did you stay here all night?" he asks Lirene. She shrugs, but says nothing. As is her usual way when the answer is self-evident. "_Why_?" Anders presses.

"Because if you want to be honest, I was more worried about you than about her. What in the Void were you _doing_?"

"I... don't know," Anders admits. He doesn't remember much.

"I've never seen healing look like that."

"Sorry," Anders mutters. His exhaustion hasn't gone away. If anything, it's only gotten worse. "I'm probably not the miracle worker you're expecting."

"I didn't say anything about miracles, did I?"

Anders sighs, tilting his head back to look up at Lirene. "Why aren't you afraid of me?" he asks pointedly.

Lirene sips her tea. "Should I be?"

"I dunno. Most people are."

"I don't frighten easily."

Anders nods. He can believe that.

He finishes his tea, then asks again where he can find the girl from last night. Lirene sighs, looking as though answering the question goes against her better judgement, and it probably does. "Please," he says softly. "You brought her to me because she needed help. I can't just forget about her."

"You'll just go after her, with or without me, won't you?"

"I need to talk to her," Anders insists stubbornly.

Lirene studies him for a long moment, then finally throws up her hands. But a tiny smile plays across her face. "She'll be in the alienage, most likely."

Anders frowns. "She's not an elf."

"It's Athenril's ground. And the safest place for someone with her... particular secrets."

"The templars don't come there?" Anders asks, too quickly.

"Now don't go getting too excited. They do their sweeps, same as anywhere. But the elves don't take too kindly to having their home trampled on without good reason." Anders nods. It makes a certain kind of sense. A rush of energy flows through him, a kind of light, for the first time since meeting Karl. "You brought her to me on purpose, didn't you?" he asks Lirene, as he pulls a coat on over his ragged clothes.

"Yes, I did," Lirene tells him firmly. "She needed a healer, and I knew you would help." With that, she heads out the door. Anders leaves only a few seconds afterwards, but it's already impossible to tell which way the woman went. The alleyways of Darktown snake around in a confusing maze, ending abruptly or extended whenever someone felt a need. Anders sighs, and pushes his way toward the alienage, relying on the position of the winter sun in the sigh to help him navigate. He's never found reason to head for that section of the city, but the large, gnarled tree growing in the center of that neighborhood is an easy landmark.

"What're you doing here, _shem_?" sneers a dirty, too-skinny boy whose fingers wrap tightly around a knife, the minute he crosses some unseen boundary that divides the elven ghetto from the rest of the city.

"I'm looking for the Hawk," Anders says, putting an edge of intimidation into his voice. The child spits on the ground.

"Ain't no Hawk here," he insists. But he glances backward, at a crumbling house across the square. Anders smiles, and a look of fear steals over the boy's face as recognition dawns. He runs, then, darting into another of the ubiquitous alleyways in a matter of seconds.

Anders gathers his mana as he walks toward the dwelling, a poor shack like all the others here, but larger than most. He breathes deeply as the coils of power flood through his body. Through heightened senses, he is aware of an arrow trained on him. He holds his arms up, showing his lack of weaponry - not that he relies on steel. "I'm only here to talk," he announces.

"Your kind ain't welcome here," calls a voice, from above his head.

Anders lets a smile quirk onto his face. "Liar," he replies, secure in the knowledge that they are protecting at least one human mage only a few steps away from where he stands.

The door to the house opens abruptly, and a hard-faced elven female of indeterminate age steps out to meet him. Her dark red hair frames her severe features and calls attention - purposely, Anders is sure - to her multiple scars. "You are bold, to come here and insult my people."

"Fortune favors the bold."

The elf laughs, an open guffaw that leaves her shoulders shaking. But the laughter stops as abruptly as it had begun. "I know of you, healer," she tells him, in a voice laced with threat. "What are you doing here?"

"I wasn't lying. I'm here to talk. Just tell the Hawk I'm here. I'll leave if _she _asks me to."

Athenril narrows her eyes, and Anders is keenly aware of how quickly the gang leader could draw any of the knives strapped about her armor. "By what right do you call her?"

"I saved her life."

"So you say."

"Ask her."

Athenril nods. "Very well. I will do so."

She retreats into the building as quickly as she appeared. Her guards still keep their weapons trained on Anders, and the sensation of eyes upon him has only grown more intense as dozens of the alienage's residence pay attention - furtively - to the spectacle his presence here creates. The door to the house creaks open again, more slowly and cautiously this time, and the dark-haired human girl Anders instantly recognizes steps out. She hovers close to the doorway and regards him cautiously, though with the careful, searching eyes that no doubt leant her the name of a bird of prey. Anders catches her eyes and smiles. She does not return the friendly overture. "What do you want?" she asks sullenly.

"Is there somewhere... I dunno... more private we could go?"

"You don't know me," the girl called Hawk demands.

"You're right," Anders replies simply. He will not take her away from the place where she feels safe, and he tells her that. "I just wanted to make sure that you're alright." He too is capable of studying a person, looking for answers. He lets his eyes take in the bandage wrapped tightly about her torso, notices the way she walks, gingerly, and with pain evident in her features.

"I don't need your help!" the girl snaps.

Everything about her is lean and predatory, defensive, but Anders can easily see past all that to how young she is, still a teenager, with hints of childhood innocence still visible despite the guardedness of her posture and the hardness in her eyes. Her mana still pulls at him, wild and hot and barely controlled, like a newly-lit fire. 'Athenril's pet firestarter,' Lirene had called her. Anders isn't surprised.

"That's not what Lirene told me," he tells the girl. Something noticeably changes in her, the moment he mentions the Ferelden woman's name. She relaxes slightly, and her eyes flicker nervously to Anders. It's not exactly a ringing endorsement of trust, but it's _something. _She says nothing, but by now Anders likes to think he's pretty good at interpreting various silences.

"I'm not going to make you do anything," he tells her, once again. "I just wanted you to know that I'm... around. In case you ever want to talk."

"About mage stuff?"

"About anything. Look, I meant what I said. I'll leave if you ask me to."

"You _should_," she insists.

"Probably. I'm not all that good at doing what I should."

The girl smiles shyly. The expression looks out of place, like it's not something she does very often. "Me neither," she admits.

Anders reaches out and runs a hand over the bandaged wound. Hawk winces and stifles a cry. Anders sucks in a breath. "Can I?" he asks softly. She holds his gaze for a long moment, searching for the catch. He can read the doubt in her as clearly as if she were speaking the words - _more _clearly, if he wants to be honest. But she finally nods. Anders smiles, relieved that he won't have to decide whether to leave her in pain or cast without the permission. He finishes the prior night's job with a shallow, simple healing spell. It washes over him like cool water after the pain of his previous attempt. Hawke gasps as the icy shock of mana flows into her, and then, to Anders' surprise, she takes over, weaving the power he's provided her with simple, focused ease. Anders drops his spell, his concentration shaken.

"You can't do that by accident!" he accuses, as though she is, somehow, _cheating_.

That mysterious smile reappears on her face, more confident this time. "You don't know me," she reminds him, and Anders is now more aware of the fact then ever. It _bothers _him, more than it should.

"Get out of here," she orders, and there is an authority to her voice despite her youth.

Anders nods. "I meant what I said, Hawk," he says, as he walks, slowly and deliberately, out of the alienage. "Come find me."


	4. Chapter 4

It's early in the morning when Anders pushes his way into Lirene's small and cluttered shop. Dust swirls in the dawn-bright light. There is a comfortable hush to the place at this time of day: late enough that those lucky enough to hold jobs in the mines have already gone to their labors, too early for those who've spent the night in the taverns and brothels to be anywhere close to waking.

Lirene grins when she sees him, at the same time as she runs an appraising eye over him. "You almost look like a real person these days," she notes. Her voice is rough, but there is a teasing lilt to it, almost a laugh. It's contagious. It makes Anders smile too.

"Thanks?"

Lirene nods. "You're welcome. It's all my doing anyway. Can't you even cook for yourself?"

"I don't know," Anders admits softly. "I've never really tried."

Lirene stares at him with that familiar mix of curiosity and concern, for a brief moment, but then she grunts and shakes her head, and moves on with her to-do list, waiting for him to catch up if he's going to.

"It's going to be a little bit hard to get some of the things you'll want," she tells him, as she shoves a handful of old rags into his arms. He'll be able to make them into useable bandages, with a little creativity and a lot of patience.

"Expensive?" Anders asks.

"Of course. Everything is. But more than that. We'll need to go to the Gallows." Lirene is watching him, so she can read the panic in his eyes before he can stop himself. It only takes a moment to recognize the way he's tensed up, and then he forces himself to relax. Lirene rests a hand on his forearm briefly. "Not inside," she reminds him. "Just the market in the courtyard."

Anders nods. Of course he knows it's the only place to get the kinds of potions and ingredients he's going to need.

"You don't have to go," Lirene tells him. She nods toward a corner that Anders hadn't noticed was occupied, and he cringes at his own lack of awareness. He's more tired than he thinks. A mistake like that could've easily been fatal. Or maybe he just trusts Lirene to protect him. More than he should. More than is safe.

There's no threat lurking in the hidden shadows of her shop, just a boy. He sits on one of the battered crates, swinging his legs back and forth. "His name's Kai," Lirene tells Anders. "You met his older brother the other day."

Anders takes another sip of his soup and tries to remember when he'd met a young boy. And then he remembers the injured Haze addict. The younger boy has the same look about him: dark eyes, caramel skin. Rivaini, maybe. Anders wonders what they're doing here. "Do they have parents?" he asks softly.

"No," the boy - Kai - pipes up, and Anders flushes as he remembers how much he'd hated it when adults talked about him like he wasn't there.

"Sorry," Anders murmurs.

Kai shrugs. "I can get you whatever you want," he insists. "Even lyrium."

The thought makes Anders cringe, though he doesn't reveal his discomfort. He stifles the lecture inside him, just waiting to burst forth, that this child is far too young to be embroiled in such dangerous games. "He's not in the gangs already, is he?" Anders asks Lirene carefully. He's aware that his concern for the child might be misplaced and is certainly useless, especially according to Lirene's exceptionally pragmatic world view, but he still is not capable of erasing that concern.

"Kai's a courier," Lirene replies. "Unaffiliated, at least so far. His brother looks out for him."

"You mean when he's not so high that he can't even move," Anders spits.

Lirene whirls around, fire flashing in her brown eyes. "If you speak ill of the people here, I want you out," she demands. She sounds just as righteous and frightening as any of the Chantry's preachers, and Anders immediately feels guilty. And a whole lot less judgmental, which was probably the point. "What other options do you think exist for a child like Kai?" Lirene adds, more softly. "Or Callin? Or _you, _for that matter? We're all criminals."

"I know," Anders replies simply. He'd long ago lost count of how many laws he's broken in his turbulent life. Every breath he takes simply prolongs the inevitable death sentence when it all catches up to him, and he damn well knows it. "I'm going to the Gallows," he insists. "The kid doesn't need to get caught for me."

Lirene nods, tossing him a few empty pouches. Anders stuffs them into the waistband of his trousers. The smallest bag has a few coins safely hidden inside, enough - he hopes - to pick up enough herbs and medicines to be able to make some kind of difference for the people who have already begun to seek him out.

The Gallows courtyard is the largest open space in the city, but it manages to feel claustrophobic despite that. Or maybe _because _of it, Anders isn't sure. It's possible that the courtyard feels smaller because of the comparative immensity of the prison looming above it. The little bit of the island accessible to the public is swallowed completely by the shadow of the fortress. Where Hightown's market eventually dissolves into wide streets, and even the stalls of Lowtown allow for quick exits into spiraling alleys and secret hideaways, the Gallows courtyard is walled off on three of its four sides by thick bars and heavy stone. The open space at its entrance leads only to dark water, and is patrolled by a full complement of templars.

Anders avoids them, but looking over his shoulder thankfully just makes him fit in with the nervous crowd, rather than stand out. He doesn't believe in the ghost stories that commoners and children tell, about haunted places that drive men mad. But just because it's more complicated than they think doesn't mean there not a grain of truth in the whispered tales. He can feel the thinness of the Veil here, fraying and tearing as the mages stuck inside work spells that only weaken that barrier further. It was like that at Kinloch Hold too, but Kinloch Hold wasn't built on blood. Or at least, not _much_. Anders scowls up at the thousand-year-old statues that somehow still gleam golden, high above his head. Even if they weren't there, he's completely aware of the history of this place. He can't not be. The courtyard is as large as it is because it was built to be a killing field, the end of line for millions of slaves, and the oppressive weight of that terror hasn't faded. Even people who can't touch the Fade can feel it. It's obvious in the way they move and talk, hunched and hidden, refusing to make eye contact. Those with weapons keep a hand on them, and everyone watches each other with furtive, paranoid glances.

Even Lirene seems in a hurry to be done with this place. She doesn't stop to talk to people the way she does in the streets of Lowtown. It's Anders who takes it slow this time, not because he wants to, but because he feels as though he _must_. There is something in this space that pulls at him, refusing to let him leave easily. He hears things that no one else seems to: warped echoes of children crying on the other side of the bars, angry voices yelling in a nonsensical mix of Kirkwall Common and Tevinter Arcanum that somehow makes perfect sense to him.

"You alright?" Lirene asks him softly.

"Yeah," he replies immediately, although he isn't. His skin feels too tight, like something is crawling inside him. His muscles burn with restless energy. The Tranquil that run most of the shops here make his stomach flip. He searches for Karl without trying to be too obvious about it, and he isn't sure whether or not it's a good thing that he doesn't see his friend. Worry and disappointment mix into the already overwhelming dark nature of this place, so Anders finishes his transactions with brusque efficiency. He secrets away a good stockpile of herbs. There are more complicated mixes that he can't make on his own, but they are not for sale - at least not in the daylight hours, even if he had the coin. Magebane. Lyrium. When he was a Warden, it was possible to get hold of them, but he's obviously lost those connections. One day soon he might need them again - the potions, and the connections. But for now, he'll just have to be careful, and hope that careful is enough.

Lirene sticks close to him on the long walk back to Darktown, reluctant to leave him even when they reach the narrow crossroads where they will have to split up, for her to go home and Anders to go... somewhere. He sticks around, long enough to watch her disappear into the twisting streets. He's not worried about her safety. He just doesn't particularly want to be alone.

He tells himself that it's a relief to be away from the Gallows. He says the words aloud, under his breath, as he flexes freezing fingers and watches the air escape his lungs and puff out into the winter cold. Down here there is no sky, but at least that means that the prison island is out of sight. Not out of mind, though. Never.

His cramped hovel feels even more dark and lonely when held up against the burning, permanent _aliveness_ of a place like the Gallows, which is intensely painful, but real in a way that the dullness of day-to-day existence can never hope to be. Mana exists everywhere, but it seems harder to find down here, where he is the only one capable of grabbing onto it, and he does so only when he has to, when it's worth the risk. It seems slippery now, and far away, a flicker that gets harder to catch every time. He wonders about the mage girl hiding in the alienage, if she feels the emptiness and lack as strongly as he does. He longs to speak to her again, to find out more about her. But he can hardly blame her for wanting to hide, or keep secrets.

He growls, overwhelmed with frustration, and kicks over a chair. It clatters to the floor and does nothing to make him feel better. He can't sit still anymore. He can't stay here. He stops trying to organize the spoils of his expedition, abruptly dumping it all in a cluttered heap on his shelves, and he tromps out again, into the chilly night. The air is close and damp with clinging cold, but thankfully there doesn't seem to be much wind this evening.

Lirene is waiting for him even before he even manages to push the door to her shop all the way open. She's only half dressed, and her hair spills over her shoulders in loose tangles. Anders clears his throat awkwardly, feeling his cheeks heat up as he turns to flee.

"Sorry," he chokes out. "I'll just... go."

"Don't," Lirene orders, as she quickly pulls on a clean shirt. Anders stops, and sits down in an empty chair. He looks around the room, taking in the things he's somehow never noticed before: the bed, the well kept dresser... the things that make the place a home.

"I don't think I've ever been here... you know, alone... before," he admits.

Lirene smiles. "That curtain's usually up, when the store's open. You're not the first to forget I live here."

Anders nods again, just to acknowledge that he's listening. He still feels slightly dazed. It takes him longer than it should to recognize the warmth of Lirene's fingers wrapped in his. "Do you want to sleep here, Anders?" He shakes his head. "You need to sleep."

"No."

Lirene places a steaming mug of tea into his free hand. Anders sips it slowly, reveling in its warmth.

"You're exhausted. How long has it been since you've slept?"

"Last night."

"For more than an hour?"

"Why do you care?!"

"Because you came here for a reason," Lirene replies steadily. She doesn't let go of Anders' hand, and doesn't let him break away. "Why did you come?"

"I dunno, I just... I don't really know anyone else. And I..."

"Didn't want to be alone," Lirene finishes softly.

"Yeah."

He sets his mug down on the table, as Lirene hugs him close. Anders inhales a deep, shaky breath, but he doesn't want to let go of this. He reaches up, cautiously, and runs his fingers through Lirene's tangled dark hair. He can feel the warmth of her breath and her body. He lets it wash over him, all too aware of how long it's been since he's felt the touch of a woman. Or better yet, the companionship of a friend. He presses his lips gently to hers. She stiffens suddenly, and gasps. She does not push him away, but Anders feels the sting of rejection all the same. He pulls away, too quickly and too slowly all at once, and lets his hands rest awkwardly at his side.

"I'm sorry," he stammers out hastily. Panic overtakes him. Maker, how could he have been so _stupid_? Was he really that desperate? He could go to the Blooming Rose to take care of those needs. There was no reason for him to come here, to involve Lirene, who has done nothing but help him, unconditionally. Maker, why can't he just _think_, sometimes? Would it kill him? "I'm _really_ sorry," he repeats, desperately trying to repair the damage. "I shouldn't have..."

"Shut up," Lirene insists. Anders does.

She drags in one last long, shuddering breath. Anders prepares himself for a telling off, but when she speaks, her voice is soft. Barely audible. She reaches out and runs her fingers down his bare arm, leaving goosebumps in their wake. He shivers slightly, and reminds himself that whatever signals he'd thought he'd read, he was _very wrong_. Lirene's other hand rests softly on his cheek. "It isn't you," she tells him softly.

Anders nods. He can already feel himself pulling away. He's heard this before. Hell, he's _given_ this speech before, plenty of times.

Don't get attached. He should know better.

"I'll just go," he repeats, more urgently now than those few minutes ago when he was hovering uncertainly in the doorway.

"Don't," Lirene orders, again. Anders turns back, despite his better judgement. "Please don't," she murmurs. It is the most vulnerable he's ever seen her. He can't walk away. And she must know that.

He nods, and sits down in a chair, waiting until she sits down too, across the table from him. He sits awkwardly, perched on the edge of the piece of furniture. "I'm sorry," Lirene tells him, and he doesn't meet her eyes. What the hell does she have to be sorry for? "It's just..." she shakes her head. Anders damn well recognizes what it looks like when someone doesn't want to talk about something.

"It's okay," he tells her, honestly. "You don't have to explain."

Lirene runs her hand through her hair and breathes out, long and slow. She shakes her head. "No," she admits. "I don't. But I want to."

She pushes the mostly untouched mug of tea into Anders' hand. He wraps his fingers around it, but still doesn't drink. "Okay," he prompts. When she still doesn't speak, he finds himself staring at her, uncertain what he's supposed to do. "Look, I'm not really an expert at this kind of thing."

"Listening?"

"Friendship."

Lirene nods, sipping her own tea. "I kinda know what you mean."

"You? I don't believe that. Everyone loves you."

"Only because they can get something from me."

"Oh," Anders whispers. He looks down at the table again.

"Not you, though," Lirene amends quickly. "You're not like that."

"I might be."

"I don't believe that," Lirene says again. She gulps down a large swallow of hot tea, steeling her nerves. "Look, I just want you to know... tonight... it's not that I don't like you. It's just..."

"There was someone else before," Anders fills in. "Right?"

Lirene nods. "My husband. And my children." She can barely force the words out, this admission of her loss, the emptiness she's been trying unsuccessfully to fill, for years. Forever.

"Did they... die in the Blight?" Anders asks gently. He has seen so much loss and death, it's _inside him_, that Taint. He has to walk away from Lirene. She doesn't deserve someone as broken as him. He lifts his hand to his head and tucks his hair behind his ear, taps his foot up and down.

Lirene narrows her eyes, and he stops.

"Sorry."

"You apologize a lot, you know?"

Anders nods slowly. "I guess I have a lot to apologize for," he admits.

"Like what?"

"I dunno. I've hurt a lot of people. Made a lot of promises I couldn't keep. You know?"

Lirene nods again, and sighs. Her face is twisted with pain; not physical, but recognizable all the same. Anders reaches out and gently runs his fingers down her jawline. The tension in her muscles relaxes slightly in response to his touch. Sparks of yellow-blue light glow, their static energy pulling at their hair.

"Are you doing magic on me?" Lirene accuses.

"Just a little," Anders admits, letting it snap out. "I wasn't really thinking. You were... hurting."

Lirene looks up, and smiles weakly. "Thank you, Anders."


	5. Chapter 5

Callin can feel someone watching her. Not in the general way, because people are _always_ watching her, but in a very specific way - the way that feels like if it were possible for someone to kill her with just a look, she'd be dead. She sighs, and turns, reluctantly, away from the narrow crack of air and light that is the closest thing to a window that can be found in Athenril's lair.

She doesn't move, except to turn her head, but her left hand - the one hidden from view by her body, placed between her and that window - still tightly clutches one of her knives. This one's small, meant for throwing. She doesn't throw it, though. "What do you want, Fenris?" she murmurs, instead.

"Don't call me that."

The elf somehow makes _everything_ he says sound like a growl.

She raises an eyebrow and flips the dagger in her hand, knowing the movement will draw his attention. "What am I supposed to call you, then?"

Predictably, the elven fighter watches the knife. Only for a brief second, until his eyes find hers. Callin is no longer even slightly unsettled by the pure hatred he doesn't bother to hide.

"Don't call me anything," he snaps.

"Fine." She jumps down from the narrow windowsill and tucks her knife into its sheath at her hip. "So what _are _you doing here? Athrenil's got you... what? Running errands for her now?"

She ducks easily out of the way as Fenris lashes out with one arm, aiming to wrap it around her throat, she's almost certain.

She steps backward, hitting the wall behind her. The rough wood presses against her back. She flashes a predatory grin.

"This isn't for Athenril," Fenris admits, as though it pains him to do so. Callin narrows her eyes, studying him. She can practically feel the tension radiating through the air between them, a crackling energy, a collective holding of breath.

"Oh," she finally says, because in all honesty, she has no idea _what_ she's supposed to say.

"I need your help."

"Why?" It comes out sounding more blunt than she'd intended.

"Danarius is in Kirkwall. Looking for me."

"So what?"

"I need to kill him!" the elf shouts, so loudly that Callin is sure the entire alienage must have heard him. "I know where he'll be," he adds, more softly. "The man is... predictable. He likes his comforts." He goes on to describe the Hightown estate. White marble, like all the others. Huge, of course, probably big enough to house the entire alienage. It's the kind of place that would be easy to slip into and steal a few choice valuables without anyone the wiser. But that's not what he's asking. Killing a dangerous man in his own home is something entirely different. And this isn't her fight.

Callin raises an eyebrow. "Are you _crazy_?" she snaps. Obviously. Why bother asking? "Just because you've got a death wish doesn't mean I do."

"It has to be you." There's a tremor in his voice. Fear. Fenris is _afraid, _maybe even afraid of her. The realization is so shocking that it washes over her like drenching cold water. She bites her lip, and waits for him to keep talking. The elf tracks her every tiny movement with unblinking eyes. It's unnerving. "He'll have traps. Magic. I can't..." he shakes his head, and she can see the trembling tension in his muscles. "I can't do this alone, Hawk," he snarls.

She jumps backward as he picks up an earthenware jug and suddenly hurls it across the room. It crashes against the wall and shatters spectacularly. A rapidly growing pool of water floods over the toes of her boots. Fenris curses in his own language, which sounds nothing like the bits of Elvish Callin has picked up in her time working for Athenril.

"You _hate _me," she reminds him, as she begins to gather the broken shards of sharp clay. Her fingers and footsteps send ripples outward through the spilled water as she does so. Fenris watches her, for a long moment that stretches out over a few heartbeats. Then he crouches down next to her and joins in cleaning up his mess. His fingers move with practiced ease.

"I don't," he tells her.

That stops Callin completely. She freezes, clutching the knife-like fragments in her hand tightly. She sits down, not caring that the water quickly soaks through her simple linen trousers. She frowns. "What?"

"I don't hate you," Fenris admits. His voice is soft, but she swears she can hear it resonating somewhere deep inside her chest.

"Oh," she repeats softly, sounding like an idiot.

She doesn't hate him either. She doesn't even _know _him. It's the first time they've exchanged more than a word or two, usually under Athenril's suspicious glare.

"I know you understand wanting revenge," Fenris says.

Callin nods. She gets back to her feet, replacing the fragments of the broken jar in her hand with the knives she carries, weapons that are meant to hurt, to kill. "I'm not scared," she insists. "And I'm _not _doing this just because you tell me to."

"Fair enough."

Fenris' smile is grim and predatory. Neither of them have ever made much effort to hide the volatile anger that fuels them most days. Callin's heart starts to beat faster as they slip like shadows into the Kirkwall night. "You're really gonna kill him?" she whispers. The words are quickly swallowed by the heavy air.

"I have to," Fenris replies, instantly. It's an interesting choice of words. She would've figured he'd _want _to. But maybe it's complicated. Most things are.

"What do you need me for?" she asks softly.

"Distraction. Can you do it?"

She nods. Fenris nods in return, then pushes ahead, focusing on his goal with the single-minded determination that makes him so scary.

Hightown doesn't really have the power to impress her anymore. She doesn't gawk at the clean streets and enormous estates, or the well-kept gardens. Instead, she assesses it all for threats. Fenris too is obviously hyper-aware of everything going on around him. But he is less jittery than she is. He moves with a fluid grace. Like a warrior. Callin is impressed despite herself. And even though she doesn't trust him, she's glad he's here with her - even if he's the reason she's here at all.

"We'll go in through the back," Fenris whispers. There is a narrow alleyway that allows for business to be conducted away from prying eyes, or trash to be removed without dirtying the nice neighborhood. Callin jumps as a rat streaks across her boot. Fenris only smiles.

"He's running away," Callin comments, watching the rodent disappear. "Seems like the smart thing to do."

"Probably," Fenris agrees. Callin listens for a hint of sarcasm there, but the elf seems completely serious. It doesn't exactly fill her with confidence. "Can you get it?" he asks softly, as they crouch down beside the cellar door.

"Seriously?" She slides a pick between her teeth, holding it in place as she studies the rusting lock. It'll be easy. She grabs the pick with a quick movement. It takes only a few moments of work. The lock opens with a satisfying click. She smiles, looking up at Fenris for approval. He grunts, and pushes his way past her.

"Lockpicking isn't a skill I ever had the opportunity to pick up," the fighter tells her honestly. He gives her hand a quick squeeze, and then he jumps into the darkness. Callin can hear the impact as he lands, a couple of meters down. "I was expecting it to be more difficult," he adds, as Callin drops into the estate's dank basement beside him.

"Like a trap?"

Fenris nods, although it's hard to see it in the dark.

"Maybe there aren't any."

"Maybe we just haven't found them yet."

Callin knows Fenris is right. It's _obvious. _The whole place is humming with tension, the very air feels poisonous. "It's so dark in here," she whispers. Fenris says nothing, doesn't even acknowledge the comment. He doesn't need to. She closes her eyes, concentrates. A sputtering flame comes to life around her fingers. The slimy, shadowy tendrils she can feel inside her aren't chased away by the light. If anything, they grow heavier. Scarier.

"His magic is drawn to yours," Fenris explains, in his growling drawl. "Turn it off."

She does. Her magically fueled light snaps out, immediately, and it gets easier to breathe. But only slightly. The room still smells of death and decay. Fenris presses a torch into her hand, and she waves it over the room as her eyes adjust. The place is filled with cobwebs, dead animals... "Are those...?"

"Skeletons," Fenris spits.

"People?"

"Elves. Slaves. Used to fuel his power and then cast aside."

"Oh." Callin goes quiet. Nothing she wants to say feels appropriate. The atmosphere of this place seems somehow designed to stifle conversation. She follows in Fenris' footsteps as he moves upward through the mansion. It's unnerving how obviously familiar he is with the place. He barely looks around, while she can't stop trying to look _everywhere _at once. She clucks her tongue against her teeth.

"Stop that," Fenris orders. She does.

"Do you know where he is?"

"Waiting for me."

Callin stops. "Really?" She hisses loudly. "I thought this was supposed to be a sneak attack."

Fenris shakes his head. "Not possible. We're... connected. Bound together. It's unbreakable."

"Right you are."

Callin closes her eyes as the room floods with unnatural light. A chill runs down her spine. Fenris stops too. His footsteps - even his breathing - give way to silence.

A heady perfume assaults Callin, making her want to retch. Fingers grab her chin. She pulls away, lashing out with a kick. Her booted foot connects with the magister's groin. Cruel laughter echoes through the room. "She's got potential, my little wolf."

"I know."

Callin pauses, breathing heavy. Fenris sounds... dead. She licks her lips, watching the man he'd been so afraid of. The one he'd brought her here to kill. _Distraction_, he'd told her. Callin swallows hard and tells herself she can be that. She can be something this old man would never expect.

His fingers tighten around her shoulder, feeling like nothing so much as a bony spider. "I know what you are," he hisses in her ear. "I can give you power the likes of which you can't imagine."

"But you won't," Callin insists flatly. She's not a stupid little girl, no matter what he thinks.

Fenris laughs, a few feet away, a broken chuckle that turns into a stifled cry as Danarius lazily flings a hand in his direction. Callin can feel the wave of mana washing over her, heavy and painful. The magister tightens his grip on her shoulder. "Don't make the mistake of pretending you are anything more than an idle... _distraction_." He lets go of her, as suddenly as he'd grabbed her in the first place. And he stalks over to Fenris. He walks slowly. Lazily. As though he can take all the time in the world. Fenris makes no move to fight him. He does not run away. He does not defend himself.

"So you've come to kill me," Danarius hisses. "How many times is this now?" Fenris trembles as the Tevinter mages gently traces the lines tattooed onto his skin. Callin bites her lip, watching the disturbingly sensual display. "What makes this time different?"

"_Me_." She launches herself at the magister, casting without thinking, drawing from the well of power inside her without bothering to shape it. Athenril teases her, calling her firestarter, but that's what she _is_. Flames roar to life, launching from her palm. They lick at the robes and skin of the man tormenting Fenris. For about two seconds. Danarius whirls around.

"You are nothing more than a _child_," he hisses. Callin rises into the air, lifted by unseen force. Danarius slams her against the wall. "It would not be worth my time to kill you."

"You will not harm her," Fenris snarls. Callin can see the glint of light from his _massive sword_, as the weapon aims for Danarius' head. She falls - landing hard - as the magister quite literally forgets about her. Fenris' sword goes flying away from him, lodging itself into a marble pillar on the other side of the large room.

"You are humorously predictable," the magister accuses. Indeed, he does seem to be laughing. "You forget, I am the one who gave you that weapon." He leans in closer to Fenris, and his voice is so low that Callin almost can't hear him. "I gave you everything you are. You survive because _I _allow you to."

"Why?" Fenris asks weakly. Danarius narrows his eyes.

"What?"

"You _need _me." Now, it is Fenris who laughs. The elf's laughter turns crazy, and it doesn't stop so much as change, into a scream of pain, then a cough. "You think you own me, but you're wrong."

"Insolent..."

Callin doesn't wait for Danarius to keep talking. She slips a dagger into her hand, and creeps up from behind, while his attention is focused on Fenris, while he's underestimating her. She traces the knife across his throat. Sticky blood wells up almost immediately, but Callin pushes deeper. It isn't clean or simple. It is messy, and painful, and it makes her feel sick. She looks down at the blood soaking her fingers as the magister gurgles out one last, hopeless gasp, and then falls limp.

_I was expecting it to be more difficult_, Fenris had said. Callin knows she should agree. But it was difficult enough. She thinks about the skeletons lying forgotten in the cellar. She just wants to get out of here.

She looks up toward the elf, waiting for his approval, waiting for him to tell her that she's done here. She needs a bath, and a drink. She needs a way to forget, a way to prevent the nightmares that she already knows are coming. But her... temporary ally, if that's what he is, is curled up in a ball. _Fuck_. Callin kicks at the elf, but he doesn't respond at all. He's still breathing, she can tell because every exhalation sends a white puff into the frigid air.

She leaves Fenris alone, for now, and turns instead to the man he'd brought her here to kill. There's part of her that doesn't believe the magister is actually dead. But his body is still. Dark blood pools onto the floor, but not a lot of it. It calls to her, strengthened by the darkness already inherent in this place. But Callin shakes off the slim temptation. This was never her fight, or her revenge. It's easy to walk away from.

"Come on, Fenris," she says, aloud. Hoping it might somehow be that easy. Of course it isn't. He's _useless_. Dead weight. She ought to leave him here to die. She doesn't owe him anything. And he might still hate her, even though he said he doesn't.

She tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear and stares at him, listening to her heart thumping loudly in her chest. "Come on," she pleads again, quieter now. "You got what you wanted, you moron!"

She reaches out, placing her hand over his heart. It's protected by armor. _He's _protected, or should've been. But he isn't _hurt_. Not physically. There's not a scratch on him.

"Connected, unbreakable," she murmurs, remembering his words.

She turns back to the magister's body, which still lies unmoving, eyes open, just a few steps away. Did Fenris expect this, too? Is this one of the traps he'd needed her here to untangle?

"I didn't sign up for this," she cries, pounding her fists uselessly against his well-crafted armor. Fenris doesn't even flinch. He's not even _awake_. "I hate you!" Callin yells.

She curls herself into a ball not altogether different from the fetal position Fenris is in, lying on his side, breathing shallowly. His lips occasionally twitch. His eyelids flutter. Callin wraps her arms around her knees. With one hand, she reaches out, and rests her hand atop his. His skin is cool and clammy. She doesn't think about that. She _concentrates_, on breathing out, on pushing out, on _fixing. She can fix this. _

The elf goes into some kind of fit. His muscles tense up, and he shakes uncontrollably, even when Callin reaches out and pushes him down. He's stronger than she is, by a long shot. But it's not like he's trying to _fight _her. The tattoos snaking over his skin flare with blue-white light.

And Callin is pushed backwards. Her ears ring, even when she shakes her head. The high-pitched whine doesn't clear. It only gets worse.

She pulls herself to her feet, still dazed. Somewhere deep inside of her, she is aware of the need to _move_, to get out of here before someone comes to check up on the situation, or before she's trapped here forever. Or before Fenris gets worse. He might die. And she knows she shouldn't care, but she cares anyway.

She grabs the elf by the arm and drags him out of the house. She uses the front door, without caring who sees them. She has no time for sneaking.

Fenris groans as his head smacks against the stone steps. Callin stops. "Fenris?"

"I said don't call me that!"

She grins. "You're not dead!"

He shakes his head. "No," he whispers, sounding awed.

"Can you walk?"

He nods, moving slowly and gingerly. "He's dead," he breathes. "I'm... free."


	6. Chapter 6

Anders wakes up. Sort of. A hazy half-alertness settles over him. He moans groggily as he sits up, and he presses his hand over his eyes in an effort to block the nonexistent light. The urgent banging on his door doesn't go away. He groans again, and somehow manages to pull himself to his feet. He stumbles the few steps to the door and pulls it open.

His eyes widen as he recognizes the girl. A thrill of connection surges through him, a ripple of heat as her mana touches his, and stirs it up, filling him with a new and sudden wakefulness. It's enough, anyway, to attempt to make sense of the fact that she isn't alone. This isn't a social call. It's obvious in the anger and fear that propel her actions. Her small hands are locked around the muscular, color-streaked bare skin of an elf who is clearly much stronger than she is. He curses at her in a language that Anders does not immediately recognize, until the Hawk snaps at him to shut up. Surprisingly, the elf complies. Anger still flares in his narrowed eyes, and his suspicious scowl travels freely from the mercenary mage to the healer standing, shirtless and confused, in the doorway.

The chill of night enters the room freely, and Anders shivers. Goosebumps prickle at his skin.

"He needs help," Hawk demands. There is a petulant stubbornness to her tone, and Anders frowns. Sticky blood sticks to the elf's shockingly white hair, and his eyes, when he looks up enough for Anders to see them, are clouded and dazed.

"What happened?" Anders asks softly.

"I don't know," Hawk replies.

Anders' frown deepens.

He points the elf to a falling-apart cot hastily shoved into a corner. The fighter scowls at him, but sits. The cot sags under his weight, but the elf seems not to notice.

Anders sits across from the fighter, and reaches out to trail his hand over his arm. The tattoos inked into his skin seem to glow a brighter blue as soon as Anders gets close enough to touch. The elf yanks his arm away, and backs up as far as he can, slamming his back up against the nearby wall. He watches Anders with wild, suspicious eyes.

"He won't let you heal him," Hawk murmurs.

"Then why in the Void did you bring him here?" Anders snaps. There is something inside him, a frenetic energy responding to the overload of power in the room. He can feel like three of them, each _glowing _inside him, pushing the mana inside of him to strain for release. He flexes his fingers; open and shut. And he watches the girl, Hawk. His eyes don't leave hers, as he searches for some hint of truth, some _reason_.

"I don't know," she answers, honestly. She looks between the two men, looking lost and overshadowed, caught between them. "Because. I -"

"We need a place to lie low for a while," the elf growls. He holds Anders' attention, distracting him from the girl. But Anders can still _feel _her presence, hovering just out of reach. His skin feels itchy and too small. He realizes that he is still standing there naked and shirtless. But his clothes are mostly thrown directly underneath the cot the elf is sitting on. Anders sighs. He squeezes his eyes shut, and wills his headache to go away. With one hand, he fumbles around on the nearby shelf for the potion that will keep him awake enough to make sense of this. "I am perfectly capable of healing by the normal methods," the elf assures him. "I have suffered from far worse wounds than this."

Anders nods absently. He hasn't been in Kirkwall long, but it's not the first time by far that he's dealt with people who are too proud to let a mage erase their injuries for them. Maybe Anders even counts as one of those people. He supposes it depends on who you ask.

"He hates mages," Hawk points out. Anders groans, and turns to look at her. She's sitting on the table, looking exhausted enough that she might fall off. Anders figures the elf wasn't the only one involved in a fight tonight.

"And, I say again, you brought him _here_."

"He hasn't killed me yet," the girl admits. She flicks her fingernail against the scratched-up tabletop, and doesn't look at him. "I think he... kind of owes me."

"He works for Athenril, does he?"

"I don't work for anyone," the elf snarls.

Hawk shrugs. "Tonight wasn't about Athenril," she concedes, which sounds like a hedge if Anders ever heard one.

"He says he doesn't need a healer," Anders points out.

"Yeah, but-"

"Hawk," Fenris pleads. "I just need... I just need... sleep." His words are slurring. Anders studies the girl, attempting to gauge her reaction. Somehow he knows that paying attention to _her _is the important thing, that it will tell him what he needs to know, that it will matter more than watching the elf.

She can tell he's watching her, obviously. Her eyes flicker up to meet his briefly, and they are clouded with the same worry and fear that he'd recognized earlier. Anders turns away from her, briefly. He studies his small collection of potions and healing agents, and his hand closes around a small glass bottle. He tosses it to the elf, who scowls down at it. Anders watches the mercenary's lip curl. "It'll help you sleep," Anders says simply. "Take it or don't, I don't care."

The elf pockets the medicine - to keep or to sell, Anders has no idea. And then he curls up on the pallet. His eyes close, but he sleeps lightly, guardedly. Anders isn't surprised.

He turns back to Hawk. The girl tucks her hair behind her ear and watches as the elf relaxes into peaceful sleep. He sits down next to her - the tabletop isn't large, and by joining her on it, he puts them so close to each other that he can feel the shallow rise and fall of her breathing. His long hair brushes against her bare skin, making her squirm.

"Did you mean it," she asks softly. "About talking to you about mage stuff?"

"About _anything_," Anders reminds her.

"Yeah," she repeats. "About anything."

He nods. "Yes. I meant it."

They both watch the elf for a long, almost-silent moment. "Did you know about those tattoos?" Anders asks. "That they're made of lyrium?"

The girl's eyes wrinkle in confusion. She shakes her head. "No," she admits. "Why would I?"

"You can't feel it?" She shrugs. "It turns him into a... conduit. Any magic that touches him, even a benign spell... it would be agonizing." He sighs, running his fingers through his hair, hastily pulling it back into a ponytail. It won't make him look any less sleep-deprived, but he wonders if it at least might make him slightly presentable. "This shouldn't even be.. possible. He shouldn't be alive."

"But he is."

"Obviously. Maybe not for much longer though."

"What're you talking about?"

"Lyrium's a _poison_. You know that."

"Lots of people use lyrium and don't die."

"Well, no. Not right away. But to have it _inked into your blood_..."

"You can't help him, though? He's still gonna die." Her voice shakes, just a little, as she asks. Anders takes her hand without thinking, and he is instantly aware that unlike their other brief interactions, this time, she doesn't pull away.

"I don't know," Anders says carefully. "He's not _hurt_, in the traditional sense. He's not sick. I don't know..." He sighs, watching her chew on her lower lip. She doesn't meet his eyes. "Hawk, why'd you come here?"

"Because you told me to."

Well, he can't exactly argue with that. But this is over his head. He watches the elf, who barely moves, even in his sleep. "Who is he?" he asks softly.

Hawk shrugs. "No one." Anders raises an eyebrow. He doesn't believe that for one second. "He's called Fenris. He used to be a slave."

"But -"

"In Tevinter. But he lived here sometimes too. A lot of the time. His master owned this mansion in Hightown. I guess he was a merchant, or like a... diplomat. Or something."

"A magister," Anders fills in. His lip curls in hatred, mixed with fear. He feels like he can barely breathe as he attempts to sort through the implications of all this. His stomach constricts. He'd heard stories of the Tevinter mages growing up, of course he had. But he'd figured most of those stories were corrupted by Chantry propaganda and bored kids. "There's magic in him," Anders breathes. He can feel it, if he tries, the same way he can feel the mana flowing through the girl sitting next to him. "Using his body itself as a source of mana. Literally feeding off of him to fuel unnatural power."

"Yeah," Hawke breathes. "I've seen him kill people just by touching them. He can make them bleed without any weapons."

She's scared of him, Anders can hear it in her voice. He can't blame her. What she's describing is the worse, most evil kind of blood magic. "Why haven't the templars caught up with him?"

"He's not a mage."

Anders snorts. He might as well be. It scares him to think what the Chantry might do if they got their hands on this living Tevinter experiment. "I don't think that really matters," he manages to say, evenly.

Hawk only shrugs. "So he's not gonna die, right?" she finally says. Her eyes flicker between the two men, looking for reassurance, some sense of safety to counteract her fear.

"I don't... think so," Anders repeats. He wonders why he can't just give her the 'yes' she so clearly wants to hear. But he doesn't want to make promises he can't keep anymore. And, for some inexplicable reason, the things he says to this girl feel like they matter.

"Good," Hawk confirms. She nods. Her grip on the tabletop tightens just a bit. She watches as Anders pushes himself to his feet and begins to rummage around for something they can eat. He starts a pot of tea, and then he turns back to the other mage.

"What about you?" he asks gently, as he brings her some bread and cheese. "Are you hurt?"

She shakes her head, but Anders doesn't believe her. She is exhausted, bruised, covered in blood. It's the second time in a week that she's been here. She's talking this time, but she only looks more shaken and vulnerable.

"Have you ever killed anyone?" she asks. She holds the hard roll he'd handed her tightly in her hand, but doesn't eat it. Anders raises an eyebrow, and he sits down next to her. She shifts slightly, as far as she can in the small space. But she watches him, intently focused on his response.

"Yes," he tells her, very softly. The girl does not visibly react at all. Her muscles are tense, but that's not new. Anders can feel the mana stirring inside her. He rests his hand on her shoulder. The heat of her skin radiates through the threadbare fabric of her shirt; it seems to jump from her to him. "Have you?" he asks, even more quietly.

She nods. "I _want _to," she admits.

Anders notices the way she holds her breath, the way her fingers of her free hand curl up into a fist after she stuffs a large chunk of the hard bread he'd given her into her mouth.

He shakes his head, and he too begins to eat. "I don't believe you."

She swallows the rest of the small meal, and glares at him. She wipes her arm across her face, and stares at the elf still sleeping a few footsteps away. Fenris barely moves, even in slumber. Anders has to watch for a long time before he sees evidence of breath. He rubs his own eyes and lifts his cup of tea to his lips, letting the steam coming from the mug warm him even before he takes a drink. He wonders what it would be like to be able to sleep so calmly. He gulps the tea, nearly choking against the heat, and scratches his messy hair, barely stifling a yawn. His head is swimming. He grabs another of the potions that will keep him awake, and pockets it, promising himself that he won't take it yet. Only if he needs it.

The girl - Hawk - doesn't even seem to notice. She slips down from the table so that she is standing. She spins around, so that she is looking at him once again. With Anders slouching atop the table, they are now almost eye-to-eye. "I slid my knife across a man's throat this morning," she snarls. Her voice is full of righteous, fiery anger. It seems out of place coming from someone so young and small, though Anders knows damn well that underestimating someone like her could easily get him killed.

"That I believe," he tells her, honestly. "But I don't believe you... _want _to kill."

He can't explain why he feels this with such certainty. Maybe it's the shock of connection that buzzes through him every time he's in close proximity to her. Maybe it's the way her mana feels: clear, and bright, untainted by the darkness that tends to creep in after someone has dealt to long with pain and death and despair. Maybe it's just that he has always been adept at reading people, a skill that only grew more critical over the years, with his very survival riding on it. He doesn't trust anyone, not all the way, but he believes that this girl - like Lirene - is worthy of being trusted.

"Only the ones who deserve it," Hawk concedes. Her voice is quiet, but serious. There is a hardness in it that Anders recognizes all too well. He squeezes his eyes shut, and blows out a long breath. It's true he's only guessing at this girl's age - sixteen summers, he figures; maybe a little more - but he knows that is certainly old enough to understand desperation and survival.

"You killed someone this morning," he repeats. The mercenary mage holds his gaze but says nothing. She does not even nod. But Anders can read the confirmation in her eyes, if such a thing is even necessary, and he is not entirely sure that it is. "You did it for him," he adds, nodding at the sleeping elf.

"Yeah. I guess, I mean... I don't know. Maybe."

Anders takes another sip of tea to cover his smirk. "That would about cover all the options, yes."

"He asked for help," Hawk whispers quietly.

"To _kill _somebody."

"Danarius."

"The magister?" The girl nods. "You killed a _Tevinter_ _magister_. By yourself?"

Hawk shrugs. "Yeah, I guess. It wasn't that hard." At least some of the lie is betrayed when she lifts her hand to the back of her head, wincing at the tenderness of the bruises left there. She hasn't bothered to heal herself, not yet. "He wasn't really paying that much attention to me. He wanted Fenris."

"Still." A mixture of awe and worry swirl up and fill Anders. He isn't sure _he _could take down a magister, he isn't sure he'd want to. And she's acting like it's nothing. "Anders, Danarius barely touched Fenris, and he... I thought he was dead. I think..." she stops for a long moment, and holds the healer's gaze. And then she shakes her head. "I think he thought he was gonna die," she whispers. She tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "He told me that there was this... unbreakable connection. That Danarius could always find him."

Anders nods. He knows the theory behind such a spell - every Circle mage with a phylactery is familiar with it. Fenris just carries the phylactery inside him, bonded to just one man - the reason such a spell isn't much use to the Circle, without a physical vessel that any templar can use. "May've been that once upon a time, Danarius dying would've killed a bonded slave. But blood magic is just like any magic, I guess. Fades over time."

Hawk studies him, a dull non-comprehension glazing over her already-tired features. But she locks onto the words she does understand. "So he really is... free, then," she presses.

Anders shrugs. "Much as anybody. You really do care about him, don't you?"

She shakes her head, and Anders may be imagining it, but he could swear she blushes just a little bit. "No way," she spits out. "Absolutely not."

"If you say so."

"He hates me," she demands.

"Do you hate him?"

"I don't even know him. He just... needed help. Okay. That's _all_."

"Okay," Anders concedes. It may even be true. People like him and Hawk, and probably Fenris, don't tend to get attached. They just survive.

"You know," he says softly, as he finishes the last of his breakfast. "I knew a few elves, in the Circle. Most of 'em were grateful to have some escape from the life the alienage would've forced on them."

"I guess that makes sense," the girl replies.

"But you seek out that life?"

"I guess?"

"It's not really a choice, is it?" She shakes her head, and Anders nods. He understands. The more he finds out about her, the more he wants to learn. But he won't push it. "Get some sleep," he tells her. "You can stay here as long as you need to."

Hawk drains the last of the tea from her mug, and shakes her head. "I can't," she tells him flatly. She shakes Fenris awake, and the elf doesn't protest. There seems to be little noticeably wrong with him, as he glares suspiciously at Anders and follows the girl out.

Anders watches them go. Cold dark fog blows in off the docks and shrouds them quickly. He sits down on the newly-vacated cot and eventually drifts into a restless, broken sleep; the best he can manage, anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

The grey light slanting across the floorboards and through the cracks in the wall is far too dim to see by. Anders rolls over, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling, wrapped in the shadows and the darkness. His muscles feel stiff, and hunger gnaws at the inside of his stomach, enough to register as a noticeable pain as he slowly sits up. His throat feels dry, until he fumbles about for a nearly-empty waterskin hastily thrown on the shelf above his herbs and potions. He sips at the water, then stretches and stands. Even now, years away from the Tower, the midday quiet unnerves him. Midday, already sliding toward afternoon. He'd slept through nearly the entire day.

He rubs his eyes and scrounges for what little food he can find. There isn't much, there isn't _enough_. He'll have to go and get some more, but he isn't quite sure how. He's better off now than when he first arrived in this city, fighting for bread against children. Now, those children are more likely to seek him out, shyly asking for help that he gladly gives. But that help doesn't put coin in his pocket, nor fix the holes in his roof or his clothing. He does the best he can - he does better with the clothing than the roof. The Chantry hadn't provided their caged mages with much more than a bare minimum set of robes and smallclothes every year or two. They'd all figured out how to make those threadbare linens last.

He fumbles for some of that clothing now: thick, heavy shirt, and warmer coat. His boots are beginning to fall apart, but they fit well. He has no gloves, so he just stuffs his clenched fists close to his body and hopes for the best. The wind blowing off the harbor is cruel and cutting. Winter in Kirkwall is long and deep. The air isn't clean enough for snow, and this close to the water they're left with dangerous ice and heavy, clinging cold. Darktown grows ever-more miserable as the long months of short days drag on. Anders clings close to the walls that loom unsteadily over the alleyways, racing as quickly as he can toward the welcoming warmth of The Hanged Man. The tavern is as shadowy and shabby as the rest of Lowtown, full of dust and mold and the smells of far too many people who've gone to long without bathing, yet Anders finds it mostly comfortable. He does not drop his guard, not entirely - he never does. Yet he relaxes enough to fill his belly with fish stew and watery ale. He's always liked these kinds of places; the dark holes where respectable people like the templars never go, where he is surrounded by serving women with rounded breasts and ready smiles, and men who are gruff and usually drunk, but at least honest about the threat they pose.

A dwarf with a crossbow hovers around at a table in the corner, and Anders raises an eyebrow in surprise. Aside from the few he'd run with in the Wardens, seeing a dwarf on the surface is obviously a rare occasion. It's rarer still to see one so obviously at home in a human tavern. The barmaid who hands him his clay mug smiles at the look on his face. "Just don't wander over there, 'less you're lookin' to have your ear talked off," she teases. Anders nods, sips his ale, and thanks her for the warning.

With food in his belly and the last traces of sleep shaken away, he feels a bit better. His thoughts are clearer, at least. He leaves behind a few copper coins - more than he ought to part with - for the serving woman, and huddles under his coat to once more brave the winter chill.

The thought of returning to his Darktown hovel fills him with a quiet dread. The rapidly sinking sun will soon force him to, but for now the white sky is bright enough to fill him with a restless energy, though it does not warm him. He turns instead to the twisting streets that form Lowtown's haphazard markets. The sellers shout loudly enough to be heard over the wind, but they seem to be shouting mostly to themselves. A woman or a boy here or there will exchange a coin or two for a few wilting vegetables or a handful of salt, but there is little enough business, and even less cheer. Kirkwall is overcrowded to the point of breaking, and it takes everything the people have only to survive. It still feels better being out here among them than being alone.

The familiar packs of children roam the streets, huddled under cloaks and coats and hiding under the threadbare canopies above the market stalls, or else tucked into the narrow gaps beside the steps leading to the poorer houses of the neighborhood. They speak in hushed whispers when they speak at all; more often, Anders spies them stealthily sliding their fingers into the pockets of unsuspecting passerby. A fair number of the City Guard patrol these streets, but these small and skinny children evade them with the practiced skill born of experience. The merchants guard their own wares far more closely than the Guard, and all but the most daring street thieves stay clear of them.

Anders wanders among them all, without purpose. Old pinpricks of fear crawl up his spine, an impossible-to-shake sense of being watched. He tells himself he has no reason to be frightened. He is smart enough - _scared _enough - not to flamboyantly throw around magic in public places. The people who surround him like fish in a stream have no reason to suspect him as anything other than someone like them, one of the masses of nameless struggling poor. Yes, there are many now in this city who know the truth of what he is, but none have turned him over to the Gallows.

One of those allies, the young boy Kai, catches his eye from across the narrow alley. He smiles at Anders. His teeth shine white in the evening shadows, and the orange glow of the fading sun reflects in his dark eyes. Anders smiles back, unable to stop himself. Without thinking, he turns to a nearby seller and pays for a tiny fragment of rock sugar. He slips it into the boy's hand. The kid tucks it into his pocket, no doubt thinking himself too old to be so easily bribed. Anders only shrugs, and sits down next to him. It's then that he notices the vials in the boy's hand; two of them, with small blue-white crystals barely visible through their shields of waxed paper.

Anders wraps his arms tightly around the boy's shoulder. He brushes the tangled mat of hair out of the child's eyes. "What do you think you're doing?" he growls.

The force of his own anger startles him, but Kai doesn't even blink. He shrugs Anders off and glares at him, with his fingers clenched into tight fists. Anders takes the scraps of street-processed lyrium from the boy and stuffs them into his pocket. He imagines he can feel something of the mineral's unnatural pull even through the smooth, thick glass. "This stuff is _dangerous,_" he insists. More dangerous, maybe, than anyone here can know. Corrupted and mixed with Maker-knows-what, as though the raw detritus of magic on the physical plane weren't dangerous enough all on its own.

Kai scowls. "Do you think you're some kind of savior?" the boy mutters. "We don't need that down here. We've got the Chantry for that kind of thing."

At the mention of the Chantry, Anders almost loses control completely. He takes a long, careful breath through his nose, and forces himself to _look _at the boy. Just a child, doing the same as everyone around him. A child left all on his own.

"I'm nobody's savior," Anders snaps. He sounds more tired than he wishes he did. The short-lived burst of energy from his rare hours of unbroken sleep seems to have faded away almost immediately, leaving him stewing in worry and the kind of angry apathy he recognizes all too well. "Do what you want," he murmurs, turning back toward Darktown.

He isn't surprised in the slightest when Kai trots along behind him. Within moments, he's running ahead - toward Lirene's shop. Anders crosses the threshold just after the boy. He lays the vials of Haze onto the Ferelden woman's counter. She frowns when she sees them, and quickly hides them away, but says nothing.

Kai crumples beneath her gaze. Anders can feel the quiet anger radiating from the boy. His brother's been gone more often than not, disappearing into the streets or the mines he's too young to die in. He comes _back_, but it's no wonder Kai is feeling abandoned anyway, clinging to Anders and Lirene in an attempt to fill the gap.

Anders looks out through Lirene's still cracked-open door, which rattles and slams as the cold wind buffets it. Only a bare sliver of moon is visible in the sky, and even that is soon swallowed by thick clouds.

"Might snow," Lirene comments.

Anders nods, even though it hasn't snowed in Kirkwall more than a few half-hearted flakes mixed in with ugly gray sleet, that he's ever seen. He remembers the days when it snowed at the Tower, and he climbed up to the top of the library shelves to press himself against the window to stare as the blizzard winds whirled thick white flakes into the air. In those quiet winter mornings, the lake around Kinloch Hold would freeze, and blankets of snow half as tall as he would blow up against the castle walls. The snow would stay, unspoiled by tracks or footprints except for those left by the occasional animal, sometimes for weeks. Those winter storms more than anything else reminded Anders how isolated they all were. It made it too easy to forget that there was an outside world at all.

Most of his ill-fated escape attempts took place in the autumn or winter: one had sent him out into a blizzard. He'd been caught within a day, dragged back to the tower, berated for being stupid enough to run out into such a brutal storm. The couple of templars that still spoke to him then honestly did seem curious when they asked: What was he thinking? Was he suicidal? - He hadn't answered, he never did. How was he supposed to explain the insane fatalistic pressure of the softly falling snow?

"Might be bad," he whispers, turning back to Lirene. "If a storm comes."

She nods, and pushes Kai out the door, telling him to get on home. Anders, she lets stay. He wraps the still-unfinished quilt left behind by the refugee woman around his shoulders.

"I can't keep him out of the trade forever," she tells Anders, her voice that familiar mixture of pointed accusation and apology. "Not if the Coterie's got an eye on him."

Anders sighs, and scratches his eyebrow. "You knew the Hawk, when she was that age?" he asks carefully.

Lirene nods. "I did. She was just Callin, then."

_Callin_. Before she had a street name. When she was just a girl. He wonders if that's how she thinks of herself. She's been avoiding him, he thinks. He isn't sure if he should be bothered by this; if there's anything _to _avoid. It's not like they're friends. He barely knows her.

"What can you tell me about her?"

A familiar smirk plays on Lirene's face. Anders rolls his eyes. "Don't give me that. She's just a kid." A kid in a lot of danger. And Lirene knows it too. She sighs and hops up onto the countertop.

Dust motes dance in the evening light. Lirene looks tired. Worried. Anders has a pretty good idea how she must be feeling. Exhausted. And like nothing you do can ever be enough. "She's a child of Kirkwall," comes the reply. "Like all the rest of 'em."

Anders frowns. The girl's dark hair and pale skin are equally common on both sides of the Waking Sea, he knows. But he wouldn't have pegged her as belonging to this city. Not by birth, anyway. "Refugee?" he asks softly.

"In a manner of speaking."

Anders nods. All apostates are refugees. She'd have moved about, if she were smart. Wouldn't she?

"She knows how to use her magic," he insists urgently. "She's _trained. _And more powerful than half the Circle apprentices her age."

And that in itself is reason enough for the flicker of fear in the pit of his belly. A mage that strong will be a tempting target for threats from both sides of the Veil.

Lirene shrugs, as though it doesn't much matter. "Her father taught her what he could, 'fore he died."

Anders nearly chokes. His eyes sting. His head hurts and his stomach feels empty. "Her father?" he repeats. He stares up at Lirene with open, desperate confusion. Mages don't have families. Not ever.

"Girl was left orphaned when the templars finally caught up to him. Miracle she escaped them, really. Her uncle took her in, her an' her brother. He didn't turn her over to the Gallows, which is about the best I can say for him."

"She's got family?"

Lirene shrugs. "She's got me. And Athenril's gang."

"That's _not _a family," Anders growls. He calls forth a few flickering sparks to light the couple of ragged candles Lirene has managed to make last. She blows out the one nearest her, and smiles at him weakly. Anders sits in the dim light, and kneads at the headache spreading quickly at the edges of his skull. His reserves of mana are wearing too thin. He's using too much, draining himself, not allowing himself enough time to rest or recover. How can he, when desperate mothers bring their starving, pain-stricken children to him, more and more.

He won't complain though. He's doing what he was put on this plane to do. The clustered hovels of Lowtown, and especially the open sewers of Darktown, spread disease as quickly as fire. Most of the children he sees, in the midst of the depths of winter's vicious plague, cannot hold down food even if there were enough to give them. He does what he can, but too many wait too long to ask for help. By the time they arrive at his door, all he can do is watch them die.

He blinks his eyes, but the fog of exhaustion only seems to settle more closely around him. He stares down, at the inside of his left arm, where a jagged scar marks him as Chantry-owned. He knows that some of the Circle's children were lucky enough to have someone be _gentle _when taking blood for a phylactery - Rhyanon had never had a scar like his. He'd been young still, alone and terrified, fighting hard, but not hard enough. The templars had cut him deep enough to _really _hurt, and he hadn't had the power or the knowledge yet to heal himself. Those skills had come to him quickly, within the first year, and the natural talent he'd shown made him rare. His skill at healing bought him his life, and doomed him, for the Chantry couldn't afford to lose someone so useful, and so dangerous. Maybe they would have sent him to cities just like this one: the slums of Amaranthine or Denerim, to heal the illnesses that prey on the helpless just as easily there. But probably not. They'd have kept him in the Chantry, for those who could afford the tithes, if they gave him any leash at all.

He cracks his knuckles and tells Lirene he's headed for the clinic. She nods. Her eyes are still deep wells filled with concern, but she won't stop him. She'll send people his way, even, when they don't have anywhere else to go.

The walk is short, but too long still for Anders liking. His eyes are drawn to the inky outline of the Gallows prison at the horizon.

He should be surprised to see Callin waiting for him, but he isn't. The door is unlocked, slightly open still. Anders steps into the still-darkened room and kicks the few damp flurries of snow from his boots.

The girl looks up, regarding him warily. But she looks comfortable enough being here. She lurks in the corner, nursing bruises that he knows damn well are new.

He closes his eyes and forces himself to mentally repeat the litany Lirene has repeated: you can't save everyone. "Why'd you come here, Hawk?" He tries to keep the edge of suspicion from his voice, but everything about her pulls him in, a fire so bright and loud and dangerous that it scares him. He doesn't know how to control himself when she's around; he doesn't know if he _should_.

She shrugs, not meeting his eyes. She can certainly recognize his hesitation, the urgency with which he almost physically pushes her away.

_She's just a kid_, he reminds himself. But he knows it isn't true. She _isn't _'just' anything. She's a powerful mage, an apostate. She's _free_, and he's broken and damaged and… jealous. Maker help him. He's still running from his own shadow, and this girl threatens to break the only fragile shield he's got. _Why do you come here?_

"I dunno," she whispers. "I just…" She stops, tears prickling her eyes.

He can feel the tension in her muscles, read the fear in the way she doesn't touch him. She still wears those knives, strapped to her armor, but for maybe the first time since he's met her, she doesn't pull one out.

And more than what he can feel is what he _can't_. He's all too familiar with the heavy blanket of nothingness that magebane creates. He gasps, and grabs her wrist, forces her to look at him. "What happened?" he asks harshly.

She flinches, and looks away, cowering in fear that sends a new rush of guilt flooding through him. "Nothing," she mutters. It's an obvious lie. "It doesn't matter."

"Tell me," he insists, and he presses the tips of his fingers to the side of her face. They are so close together that they are almost touching. Something flips inside Anders' stomach - a shock of recognition - as for a moment he is somewhere else. With _someone _else. He sucks in a long and careful breath, and holds it. He needs to clear his head. The world is spinning.

"Athenril," Hawk tells him, in a flat voice. He realizes immediately that it's the answer to his question.

Anger twists his features into a scowl, and he squeezes his eyes shut. Forcing himself to breathe. To calm down. To think things through. He doesn't want to admit it, but there are old fears lingering too, the too-familiar knowledge that he can't keep her safe.

Hawk watches him steadily, squirming away from his touch. He won't heal her - feeding her mana now, in any form, would only hurt her. "She fed you _magebane_?" he asks, voice low and dangerous.

"Not exactly." Hawk's voice is hard, but he is so close - watching so carefully - that he can't help but notice the flickers of pain and fear in her eyes. She says nothing, simply lifts her shirt to show the thin lines across her flat stomach.

Anders swallows hard. He reaches out to trace those cuts. They're not deep, they won't scar, won't leave a mark. They'll be gone in a couple of days. But… "Knives," he whispers. Hawk nods. "Coated in magebane." Another nod.

Anders clenches his hand into a fist and punches the nearby wall, hard enough to rattle furniture. Hard enough to hurt. Those cuts are precise, almost ritualistic. You could make them by pulling a blade - slow and shallow - across sensitive flesh. It would hurt like hell, but leave no permanent damage.

"At least let me help you," Anders murmurs. "Those cuts could get infected."

"They won't."

"She's done this before?"

Callin doesn't answer. She doesn't have to. He punches the wall again. She'd already told him it wasn't a choice. Just how deeply in trouble _is _she? A chill runs down his spine.

"What about the elf?" he asks softy. "Doesn't he help you?"

Callin snorts. "Fenris? I think he'd join her if he could."

"Callin…"

She freezes, not bothering to hide her surprise at his use of her birth name. Anders grabs an elfroot potion and hands it to her. She drinks it without protest, and curls her knees up to her chest.

"I didn't know if you would help me," she admits. Her voice comes out in a broken, desperate whine, and to Anders it feels like she's wrapped her fingers around his heart, so tight that she'll never let go.

He sighs. "Of course I will," he tells her. "_Maker_…" he looks at her, really _looks_, and tucks her tangled hair behind her ear. He barely breathes. "Of course I will," he repeats.

She stares at him with that surprising intensity that shocks him every time. He looks down, but he can still feel her gaze, boring into him, getting through his skin. The insistent closeness makes it hard for him to breathe. He feels frozen, trapped in place. He licks his suddenly dry lips and waits for the moment to break. "Stay with me?" he manages to choke out.

She holds his gaze for what seems like an eternity, then finally nods. "Only for a little while."

"Sure," he agrees, trying to sound casual. "Of course."

He makes her up a bed on one of the unused cots, and puts out the lantern light that tells the residents of the city where to find him. She falls asleep almost immediately, and Anders tries to pretend like she's just another patient. He retreats to his own bed and tries to read, though he is unable to focus on any of his small collection of books. Eventually, he lays down and closes his eyes.

When the gray light of morning begins to creep in, he rolls over and blinks his eyes open. He immediately glances over at the cot where Callin had fallen asleep, and he is surprised at the intensity of his relief when he confirms that she's still there, snoring softly.

He splashes his face and scrubs at his dirt-caked skin with a rough cloth and a thin sliver of soap. He uses a kitchen bowl half full of water that is only dubiously clean. There are times - not many, obviously, but _some_ - when he does miss the Tower. This is one of those times. He sighs with wistful longing when he pictures the rooms full of baths, tubs that could always be magically heated, no matter what the weather was like outside. He frowns down at the water in his bowl, aware that he could still warm it himself, with a bit of carefully manipulated fire. He quickly decides against it though. Those kinds of subtle primal spells have never come easy to him. And little enough comes easy to him these days, when he chokes off his own power more often than not, afraid to risk discovery. He finishes washing as quickly as he can as dresses himself in the warmest clothes he can find.

Outside, the storm has come, as promised. It falls in heavy flakes; already it's beginning to gather in cracks at corners of his clinic, coming in under the door and through the gaps in the roof that he has not yet been able to patch or cover. Anders keeps a fire burning, fueling it with magic, trying to make his limited firewood last.

He glances back at Callin, curled up beneath her pile of thin blankets. She stirs, and blinks her eyes open, as though aware that he is watching her. Maybe she is. An unfamiliar heat floods Anders' belly, an uncertain sense of where the limits are, how to help her. She'd come here _asking _for his help, but in the light of morning, everything that had seemed simple in the dark of night suddenly _isn't_.

Anders stirs a pot of porridge, carefully avoid meeting the girl's eyes. Waking up with a girl in his bed is still a new thing for him. He tells himself that _isn't _what this is. She's just a kid.

Callin seems to sense his discomfort. Or maybe she's just got enough of her own. She slips out of the clinic without a word, with barely a backward glance. And Anders lets her go.


	8. Chapter 8

The snow barricades people into their ramshackle homes, to huddle around inadequate warmth. They'll _die_, Anders knows, and his worst suspicions are confirmed by those few brave enough to venture out to his clinic, banging weakly on the door, coughing and slipping on the ice. Anders opens the door and studies the children who watch him with wary eyes. Some shiver so violently that their whole bodies shake, others are sullen and silent, hiding in corners wrapped in as many layers as they can find. He can't help them, beyond providing a warm fire and a few distractions: flickering sparks shaped into dancing dragons. The children watch his magical tricks with dull eyes, and a few rare, shy smiles.

Anders works himself to exhaustion. Hours slip away, maybe days. The perpetual grey haze of midwinter makes it hard to judge the passage of time.

"That's dangerous, isn't it?" Lirene asks softly, and Anders whirls around, squeezing his eyes shut and forcing himself to calm his racing heart and quell the crackle of unformed power coiling around his fingers, waiting to be shaped and wielded.

"Of course it's dangerous!" he snaps at her, but the woman doesn't flinch. She _should_. Anders grabs a skin of wine and drinks it in long gulps, forcing himself to calm. "What're you doing here?" he spits. His voice is hard. The empty vial of lyrium still rests on the tips of his curled fingers; the drug buzzes under his skin, spiking mana like crashing waves through his body.

He pushes his way past the Ferelden shopkeeper and kneels next to a cot occupied by a young man who thrashes and kicks, moaning through a fever daze. He curls up tightly, clawing at his stomach. The boy is too weak to move; his skin is soaked with sweat, his blankets stained with the shit that runs, seemingly without end, from his bowels. The smell no longer bothers Anders - to tell the truth he barely notices, even with the lyrium enhancing his senses. He sees with a kind of tunnel-vision, a direct conduit of life force between himself and the people he buys his freedom by healing. He takes the boy's callus-roughened hands in his own, and he bow his head, closes his eyes, mumbles a few words.

From a distance, Lirene thinks, he looks like he might be praying.

She holds her breath as she watches him work, knowing, as she always has, that there isn't much to see. Anders' muscles tense, and he bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. His breathing gets shallow and fast, his palms grow sweaty and slick.

Eventually, he opens his eyes again - and the eyes that look back at her are dark and dull and exhausted. He shakes his head, and withdraws. He barricades himself as well as he can behind a thin curtain.

Lirene lets her gaze fall back to the boy on the bed. She sits with him as he is dying, carried off by the same virulent flu that has claimed half of Darktown as its life toll. There are those who claim that Kirkwall is a cursed city, fueled by blood and sacrifice. Lirene has never been one for ghost stories or fancy tales, but in these foul, choking winters, she can't see how they're wrong.

Anders stirs slightly when Lirene rests her hand on his shoulder. He flinches, and jerks to a sitting position. He still looks dazed though, and his eyes barely seem to focus.

Lirene's lips are drawn into a thin line, and she won't meet his eyes. "You did the best you could," she insists, with quiet force. "No one expects a miracle."

That only makes him more defensive. Of _course _that's what they expect. "Did he have…" Anders begins to ask. His voice is hoarse, and barely audible. His eyes flicker toward Lirene's, and she recognizes the desperation in them. He's just a boy, looking for approval. He needs help as much as any of them. It's too easy to forget that.

"No family," she assures him, softly. Of course, she doesn't know that for a fact. The Kirkwall streets collect children and mercenaries like driftwood washed up on a tide. This nameless boy is one of too many. And Anders still believes it was his duty to save him. He closes his eyes and sinks into a chair, exhausted and overwhelmed.

"We'll have to…"

Lirene takes his hand in hers, and massages it gently. It does nothing to quell the extreme tension in him, and his eyes are still closed. But she'd like to believe her closeness can help him. "I'm going to put out the lantern," she says softly. "Anders, you need to rest."

He knows she's right, so he just gives her a listless nod. He doesn't want to let himself sleep though. The nightmares won't let him sleep. They're getting worse lately. He wakes up sometimes and it's hard to breathe, as he fights against walls that aren't there. The crumbling rock sewers of Darktown, its hovels and caves, pull at a part of him that he tries as hard as he can to bury. There are whispers in his mind, the kind that followed him in the Deep Roads, the kind that _clawed _at him through long months in a solitary cell in the forgotten basements of Kinloch Hold. He can't stay here, trapped inside. He struggles to push his door open, and stumbles through the drifts of blowing snow. The air bites at his skin, and he breathes it in. His lips are chapped and broken, and he shivers even through his layers of clothes. But it still feels better than not-sleeping in the dark, cramped spaces where he is chased by ghosts.

The streets are nearly deserted at this hour, and Anders keeps his guard up, aware that the only people he is likely to encounter now are patrolling templars and soldiers. Or the thieves who won't hesitate to attack a man walking alone. Even they seem to have been driven inside by the storm winds though, or they've drugged or drunken themselves into a stupor and retreated into their hiding places, this close to dawn.

Anders taps the power of primal magic to keep himself warm, careful not to use more than a trickle of mana, ready to shut it down in a heartbeat, if there is even the slightest chance of discovery.

He smiles slightly as he becomes aware that he is not the only one haunting the predawn streets. His suspicions are confirmed as the streets clear out in Hightown, though visibility is still limited by the heavy snow. "Hello, Hawk," he says aloud, to the illusion of emptiness.

After a few heartbeats, she slips down from the second-story roofs, with practiced ease. Anders remembers what Lirene had told him; that this girl is a child of the Kirkwall streets, she was raised by them as much as by any parent. Above them, the Chantry bells toll, deep and long. Even the church's gold and glass has been choked by the ice. Long icicles glint in the first rays of morning light.

Inside the churchyard's fenced-in boundaries, children shiver and work at their early chores. Hawk scans their faces with more than idle curiosity, though its not long before they retreat to the warmth of the Chantry itself, pressed into attending the dawn service, as Anders remembers well enough.

"Why're you spying on the Chantry orphans?" he asks softly.

"I'm _not_."

Anders' smile only grows. The petulance in the Hawk's tone makes her sound no older than the children she watches in the courtyard. It makes it easy to forget that she's a criminal, a dangerous apostate. Who apparently makes a habit of lurking around the Chantry itself, and that drives his fascination with her as much at it unsettles him.

"You're here to pray then?"

She glares at him, and he fights the temptation to pull her into his arms, check her over. His stomach clenches at the thought that she could be hurt, or even killed, without his knowledge. The swirl of emotions that he feels when he's around her is unlike anything he's ever felt. He doesn't understand it. If he wants to be honest with himself, it frightens him.

"Leave me alone," Callin mutters.

He actually considers it, for a few moments, watching her walk slowly down the ice-slick streets.

He knows better than to get too tied up with her anyway. Doesn't he?

He reminds himself that he has never done anything but hurt the people close to him. He fled Vigil's Keep to protect the one person in his life he figured might still care about him. He wonders, frequently, if maybe he shouldn't have, but the truth was that it hadn't been any kind of decision at all. When the Chantry sent templars to monitor the Grey Wardens' base of operations, he panicked. Their proximity, their spoken and unspoken threats, triggered deep-seated instincts. So he'd run, and left Rhyanon alone to face the consequences, the same way he always had before. So much for freedom.

He hates himself for it, every day, but he can't go back. Maybe Kirkwall is his punishment and penance. Why the hell else would he stay here?

He's never thought of himself as a Warden, not really, and he's never been good at taking orders. No, he doesn't have a home. The only time he's gone backwards in his life is when he was _dragged _backwards, and Rhyanon wouldn't do that to him. She'd let him go, even if he doesn't deserve it.

He scowls up at the Chantry, and wonders why he keeps finding himself pulled back here. Maybe, like the kids in the courtyard, there's something in him that needs the familiarity.

Callin hovers nearby, hiding under a low-hanging ceiling that keeps her out of the wind and the cold. Anders keeps tracking her in his peripheral vision, but he lets most of his attention get carried away by the echoes of subdued sound that the girl insists she wasn't paying attention to. Booted feet tromp through the snow and ice, running footsteps, light and panicked.

They stop suddenly, as the running child skids to a halt. A shiver of familiarity floods Anders, and he wraps his coat more tightly around himself. And he looks up, and finds himself staring into the ice blue eyes of a serious-looking dark haired boy. The kid stares at him through the fence, for a few long seconds that seem to drag on forever.

Anders frowns, wondering at the intensity of the brief encounter. He blinks and shakes his head, then begins to walk slowly, making like he's heading toward the massive stone steps leading toward the church's main entryway. The child eventually drops the wooden sword he'd been holding, and runs off, quickly disappearing behind the Chantry's heavy wooden doors.

"He's my brother," Callin says quietly. She slips out from her hiding place and joins Anders at the base of the stairs. There is a hint of challenge in her tone.

Anders licks suddenly dry lips, and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his trousers. He says nothing, just follows the girl as she picks out a path through the icy streets.

"He looks like you," he finally says softly.

Callin shakes her head. "No, he doesn't."

Anders doesn't reply. It's obvious she knows it isn't true. He just shrugs, and heads for one of the narrow alleyways that will lead back to Darktown, where he belongs.

Callin disappears again, at home in the shadows. The white blanket of the snowstorm will provide cover for her to slip into the Hightown estates where she can snatch expensive treasures from the nobility and rich merchants, and buy her way back into Athenril's good graces. So what if it's too late to feed her family, the way she was supposed to.

Athenril studies her haul, in the white-grey midday light, and Callin tries not to let on how nervous she is, how much she's holding her breath, waiting for the elven thief's approval. A predatory smile lights up the woman's face, and Callin flinches. Athenril only laughs, and pulls the girl close. She kisses the top of her head. "You did well, _da'mi_. Have a drink."

Callin scowls, but does as she is told. The wine - a fiendishly expensive vintage from Tevinter - does relax her. And with her thoughts dulled to a pleasant fuzz, she slips into the deceptively peaceful night once again. The snow muffles sounds, and makes her feel safer, as though the world itself wraps her in a comfortable blanket and keeps her secrets. Her soft steps barely break the icy crust above the white powder, and she watches her breath puff out into the frigid air. When Anders opens the door of his clinic and sees her, a smile lights up his face. Callin returns the expression, more shyly. The healer draws her in, despite the darkness of the room and the lack of lantern in the window. Callin brings a wisp of light into being with a simple thought, and lets it hover nearby, its color shifting slightly, pulsing from blue to yellow and back again. She studies Anders, his features shadowed by that colorful glow.

Callin's fingers wrap instinctively around the dagger strapped to her leg as something heavy crashes to the floor. Anders flinches, and there's a shuffling of feet and a small, sheepish voice. "Sorry."

Anders picks up the ceramic plate easily and returns it to his shelf. "This is Kai," he says simply.

"I didn't know anyone else was here," Callin whispers hesitantly. The boy watches her just as uncertainly.

"I know you," he accuses.

Callin smirks at that. The kid doesn't know anything about her, and she almost tells him that, but she holds her tongue.

Anders gathers up a few bowls and ladles in some watery soup. He offers them to his guests and tries to pretend that this is normal. The truth is, he is just too exhausted to care much. Exhausted enough that he needs a twelve-year-old babysitter, apparently. He hasn't missed the way the orphan boy has placed himself between Anders and the mercenary mage he's heard about in whispered rumors. Callin ignores the boy, for the most part, though she too has noticed his posturing, and she scowls. He reminds her too much of the brother she doesn't have anymore. She concentrates on eating instead. Their meal is thin and almost tasteless, but warm, and she accepts it gratefully.

Anders watches the younger mage as she slowly finishes her soup, curled up on the empty cot that has become her perch, whenever she's here. It scares him, just a little, to recognize how often that's become. It's been over a week since she came here to ask for healing, yet she turns up now, without even bothering to come up with excuses to be here. He honestly hadn't expected to see her again after their awkward encounter at the Chantry that morning, certainly not this soon. She doesn't mention their meeting in Hightown, and he doesn't either. She's comfortable here, with him, and he wants that to remain true. He can't afford to push her away, no matter how much he _should_. So he stays quiet, letting her hide, letting her watch him. Kai does the same kind of thing, hovering around him, but with Callin it feels different. Anders doesn't think of her as simply a child in need. He thinks of her as… what? Another mage? Someone like him?

He tries his best to pretend she isn't there, though in practice that's completely impossible. He can feel the heat of her mana, all fire and searing spices; it radiates out through the tiny room. It's been a long time - too long - since he's felt like he hasn't had to hide every single part of who he is, and he needs that, so desperately that he doesn't even care if he puts a seventeen-year-old girl in danger to get that need met. His obvious selfishness constricts around his heart, and he runs his hand through his hair and starts fumbling around through empty vials and his too-small stockpile of herbs. He starts crushing elfroot with a mortar and pestle and he lets the intensity of the motion work out some of his stress. Callin watches from her corner, blending into the shadows. She is far more capable of hiding still and silent than the younger boy who hovers at Anders' shoulder.

"Here," the mage finally snaps, exasperated. He shoves the mortar and pestle into the boy's hands. Kai squirms and avoids meeting Anders' eyes, and it's _noticeable_, even to Callin.

"I need help," he pleads. "Well, not really me. Somebody else."

"Your brother?"

Kai shakes his head. "No. He doesn't really care about me anymore."

Callin bites her lip. She wonders if that's true. She sees the way Anders holds the boy's gaze and knows he's wondering the same thing, but it doesn't even matter, does it? Not down here.

"Never mind," Kai whispers. "It was stupid anyway."

"You know I'll help if I can, Kai."

"You can't."

"Why don't you let me decide that?"

Kai just shrugs. He starts to talk, in halting whispers. He asks Anders if he remembers the candies he'd given him in the Lowtown market a few weeks ago. Anders nods. Of course he remembers. Kai tells them about how he'd smuggled the treats into the Gallows, slipped them to a friend of his, through the bars that blocked the mages' courtyard from the docks. The girl was of an age with him, they'd grown up together. And now… they can't see each other anymore. Kai is full of familiar frustrated anger as he admits that his friend had asked her not to come back. She'd looked scared, almost haunted. He'd seen the bruises that she hadn't been able to hide, her swollen lip… A shadow crosses Anders' face, and Callin tenses up too. Kai watches them both with pleading eyes.

"We can help them," Callin says softly.

Anders just glares at her. "What are you asking for?" he asks carefully. He speaks to both of them.

Kai watches with a sullen expression. "I knew you couldn't help," he mutters.

"I didn't say that." He sighs, and leans against the edge of the table. He is _so tired_. The whole world feels like it's spinning, out of his control. "Kai, do you what 'apostate' means?" he asks carefully.

"It's what you are. Both of you."

Anders nods.

"It means if the templars ever find us, we could be killed," Callin whispers. "It's not…" She shakes her head, tucks her hair behind her ear. "We're living on borrowed time. I know you're afraid for your friend, but this isn't the life you want for her."

Anders closes his eyes. He takes a few long, deep breaths. "I know you mean well, Callin, but you're… wrong."

"What are you talking about?" Callin asks. Her voice is suspicious. Defensive. "You're not seriously suggesting we… what? Break into the fucking _Gallows_. Because of a teenage _crush_?"

"Shut up!" Kai snaps, in a high-pitched whine.

"You haven't been in a Circle," Anders tells Callin flatly. "I have." He sighs, and looks Kai in the eyes, man to man. The boy may be young, but he's not _wrong_. "I'll help you, Kai. You and your friend. I'll do what I can."


	9. Chapter 9

The shadow of the Gallows looms over Kirkwall's slums and alleys, a constant dark presence that the people living here have absorbed in every facet of their lives. Anders scowls up at those heavy walls, and taps his fingers against his leg. His other hand clenches tight to a notebook. He huddles against the filthy wall of the Hanged Man, watching the wind off the harbor push the sign back and forth above his head. He can hear the creaking of the chains that hold up the heavy wooden board.

He draws his cloak up over his head, as much to hide his face as to shield himself from the wind.

"There's not much point in hiding if you're going to leave all your plots and plans out in the open for anyone walking by to see." Anders tips his head back, letting his hood slide away from his face. He's completely unsurprised to find Callin hovering over him. There's a slight defensiveness in her voice even when she's making joking accusations. Or maybe it's not a joke. It's hard to tell, with her.

"I'm just drawing," he points out. There's an edge of hostility in his words too, and he's not quite sure what that's about. He shouldn't let her rile him. He's talked to enough girls in his life that it should be easy.

"Really?"

Callin sits down beside him, not seeming to notice or care about the mud-soaked street. But then, he doesn't much care either - he's just grateful for the hints of spring: the warmth, the melting snow. The younger girl leans over his arm, quietly studying the lines and curves he's sketched against the heavy paper. "Why?"

He frowns, and glances up. "What do you mean, why?"

She stares at him. It feels like neither of them are breathing. Anders finds himself studying the color of Callin's eyes. Are they grey? Or green? They remind him of a forest. He feels a squirm of guilt run up his spine, like a shiver. She's just a _kid, _he reminds himself. It's none of his business what color her eyes are.

"I mean," Callin puffs out, with a dramatic sigh. "Why are you sitting out here in the rain _drawing_?"

Anders carefully closes up his notebook, and shifts his body into a slightly more comfortable position. "It's not raining," he says calmly.

"It might as well be," Callin retorts.

It's cold and wet and miserable. The lack of water currently falling from the sky seems more accidental than anything.

"What are you doing here?" he asks her pointedly.

Callin shrugs. Her fingers twitch at her side, and her eyes flit from one shadow to another, alert to threats - and opportunities. Anders raises an eyebrow.

"Should I check to see if I still have coin in my pocket?"

"You don't have any money."

Anders laughs - out loud, a genuine, honestly surprised bark. A suspicious frown darkens Callin's features. Anders rolls his eyes. "Oh, lighten up. I'm not laughing _at _you."

She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him. "Yes, you are," she demands.

"Fine. Maybe I am," he teases. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Shouldn't you be… I dunno? Curing people?"

"Shouldn't you be stealing something?"

"I'm _trying_."

"Liar."

He grabs her hand, without waiting to second-guess himself, without waiting for her to say no, and he pulls her into the Hanged Man. The door bangs behind them, and the few patrons scattered about the place this early in the morning lift sleepy heads from the tabletops and stare at them with confused frowns.

"We're hungry," Anders announces to the tired-looking middle-aged woman behind the bar. "We'll take whatever you've got that won't kill us."

"You don't have any _money_," Callin reminds him.

"I've got my charm and good looks."

Callin rolls her eyes, but Anders notices that she doesn't protest when he sets the bowl of questionable stew in front of her. She mops it up with a thin chunk of old, hard bread. Anders sits across from her, noticing through some old instinct that she's chosen a table in a shadowed corner, one that lets them see both the front entrance and the bar. He nods approval.

His stomach rumbles as he eats, slowly, taking the time to savor the subtleties of the gravy that spills down his lip. He lets his bread soften in the bowl and fishes it out with his spoon.

"Have you thought any more about… you know? Kai?" Callin asks softly.

Anders chews on his lower lip and stares at anything but Callin: at his soup, at the table, at the cold grey sunlight spilling in through the cracks in the walls. "You should stay out of it," he demands, a bit more harshly than he intended.

"You have no idea what you're doing!" she demands. It's not the first time she's told him, in no uncertain terms, what she thinks about the idea of going up against the templars. Even though he swears that's _not _what he's doing.

"And you do?" he repeats. It's an old argument, one he won't let himself lose.

"I know I'm not gonna let you get yourself killed," Callin mutters.

"I didn't know you cared."

"Of course I care!"

The force of her tone shocks Anders. He looks up - at the stubborn determination on her face, the slight pout that almost _dares_ him to say something. Maker, in this moment she reminds him so much of someone else. His stomach hurts. His chest constricts around his heart.

He shakes his head. "I can't," he whispers. "I can't… be that. Not for you. Not for anyone."

"What in the Void are you talking about?"

_I don't want you to care about me_, he almost says. "Nothing," he says instead, still slightly rattled.

Callin studies him for a long moment, and he almost apologizes, or changes his mind. But she doesn't give him enough time, thank the Maker. She disappears, and Anders doesn't chase her. He watches the door shut behind her, swinging in the spring winds.

"I see you're still making a mess of things with women," an oddly familiar voice drawls. It doesn't sound anything like Kirkwall. Anders lifts his eyes and leans back against the wall, taking in the buxom, caramel-skinned rogue he remembers from… _from the Pearl_, whispers a long-buried voice in his head. His jaw drops, and his eyes track Isabela as she prances across the room, smiling at him as she flips a dagger between her fingers.

Anders hunches his shoulders, closing in on himself without it being a conscious choice.

"Oh relax," Isabela pouts. "I'm not going to stab you." She slides her knife back into the holster resting at her hip. "Unless you want me to," she teases. She grins so widely that Anders can't help but notice the bright whiteness of her teeth. She slides into his lap and wraps her arms around his neck, and he only swallows hard, trying, and failing, to summon the words that could push her away. She runs her fingers lightly up the back of his neck. Strands of his sweaty hair wrap around her fingers. "Long way from home," she whispers in his ear.

It takes a lot of willpower to combat the way she makes him feel. Isabela knows how to do things with those fingers that have made him sweat and scream. A long time ago. In another lifetime. It's not like he'd ever made her any _promises_. "I don't have a home," he reminds her.

"Neither do I," she purrs sweetly. Her fingers begin to trace up the inside of his thigh, and he can feel that gentle pressure even through his trousers.

He grunts, and shrugs her off, ignoring how close she stays. "You should put some clothes on."

"Oh, whatever," the pirate smirks. "It's not my fault you haven't gotten laid in… how long _has _it been?"

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know enough."

She holds his gaze, and Anders refuses to break the contact. He becomes aware of his own ragged breathing. Isabela runs her fingers over his hand, tracing the knuckles he has clenched so tightly that they're turning white. "I'll keep your secret," she reminds him, honestly. "I have so far, haven't I?"

"You didn't know I was _here_." He is… _almost_ certain of that. Neither the Chantry nor the Wardens would contract a freelancer to hunt him down. Otherwise, he's already screwed.

"'Course I didn't. That doesn't change anything. You think I don't have just as much to lose as you? We can't go ratting each other out."

"You're not a mage."

She rolls her eyes. "No. Just a pirate." She pushes herself a little closer to him, and Anders catches her without thinking. "You know this fucking city has a history of selling criminals into slavery."

"They don't do that anymore."

"No. Now they just kill us."

She's not wrong. This city is brutal for just about everyone in it. "So what are you doing here, then?"

"Making money," Isabela replies easily. "What about you?"

"I don't know," Anders replies softly, after a while.

"You never do."

"What do you mean?" he asks carefully. He knows full well that Isabela is a lot smarter than she lets people think. And she knew him before Kirkwall, which means she knows him better than anyone else in this city, even if their relationship had lasted barely more than a week before her infamous "tides" carried her out to sea again, and that week had been filled with far more sex than talking.

"Who says I have to mean something?" she purrs. She grinds her body against his, and Anders clenches his teeth. That was a long time ago. He _almost _tells her that. "Nobody," he insists, instead. He holds her gaze, to prove that he is perfectly capable of thinking clearly no matter how forcefully she tries to lead him astray. "But you _do _mean something."

Isabela settles back, still on his lap, but calmer now, somehow. "Maybe," she admits. She slides a fingernail through her teeth.

Anders sighs. "I think I liked it better when we just got drunk and fucked and forgot it in the morning."

"Who says we can't?"

"I do," he insists. "I don't do that anymore."

"Pity. I was hoping you could do that… thing. With the electricity. None of my other boys have… quite your talents."

He shrugs. "Yeah, well. I'm not your boy anymore."

"You never were, and don't think I don't know that. You don't belong to anybody but yourself." She kisses his cheek, quickly before sauntering off. But she turns back to him before she can get to far away, and lifts a mug she's picked up from another table. "I'll still look out for you, Anders. You can trust me."

He nods, though he's not sure he believes it. He finishes the last of his bowl of stew and pulls out his notebook again. He doesn't open it though. He suddenly feels like there are too many eyes on him. He leans back, resting against the wall, trying to force his thoughts to come together into some kind of _plan_. He tries _not _to be aware that it's two women in about ten minutes who've walked out on him. He's losing his edge.

_Or growing up_, whispers his rational mind. If it were later in the day he might order an ale or several to make that voice shut up. Instead, he lets it talk. He'd promised a twelve-year-old boy that he'd _do something_, and here he sits, paralyzed. It's been _weeks_. Why is he so fucking _scared_?

He can feel a phantom itch running down the center of his back, a trickle of sweat. He sighs again. Sitting here isn't going to help anyone, least of all him.

He walks, toward the docks, toward the Gallows, clinging to the shadows, kicking at the puddles. He rubs his forearms with the palms of his hands, trying to warm himself up. Even though the sun is peeking out from behind the clouds for the first time since Maker-knows-when, and it can't even truly be called _cold_ anymore. Somehow, the lack of snow and wind and storm makes the perpetual grey even _more _apparent. Maybe Callin's right; maybe rain would be better. Rhyanon had always loved the rain. He remembers the way she'd held her breath, refusing to make _any _noise that would interfere with her ability to _listen_ to the water pounding against the Tower's stone walls. At Vigil's Keep, he'd ride with her, cursing her insistence that they trot and gallop through the open fields, getting soaked to the skin within seconds, instead of hiding under the shelter of the trees like _normal _people. He misses her. She shows up in his memories at all the worst times. Maybe he really does need to get laid. _Fuck_.

He could, he knows he could. The windows of the Blooming Rose are all slammed shut at this hour, though if he went inside the proprietor would take his coin and rouse one of her girls. Or boys. But Anders wasn't lying when he told Bela that he doesn't do that anymore. He's here for a _reason_. He can't pinpoint when that happened, but he's become the kind of person that feels guilty about paying for a throwaway fuck, or lying, even by omission. He smiles an ironic smile at the thought of all the Chantry lectures he'd ignored, growing up. They had _so _loved to lecture him, although he's pretty sure they'd never believe he was actually filing away every single word. Just because he wasn't listening doesn't mean he didn't _hear_. It's not like he owes them. But he owes himself. He owes other people.

He told Kai he'd try. He forces himself to hold a few things in his mind - the desperation in the boy's voice when he'd asked, the too-clear memories of fear and loneliness, the reverberating echo of gates slamming shut. His mana flares to life, growing brighter, stirring and flickering under his skin, the closer he gets to the Gallows. It's not anything anyone can actually _see_, but he can feel it. It's obvious. He tells himself that it won't be obvious to anyone outside, not if he's careful, and doesn't release any of it _no matter what_. He's out of magebane, and he doesn't know how to get more.

_What are you doing_? he asks himself, over and over again, but the answer is simple: keeping a promise. His heart beats loudly in his chest, like a steady, too-fast drum. The rhythm carries him into the Gallows courtyard. It's harder now even than it was last time. This time he's here alone, and with no pretense to disguise his illicit presence in this space.

"You there! Stop!"

Anders almost breaks and runs, but he doesn't. Just this time, he doesn't. He forces himself to calmly turn around, to just barely meet the eyes of the young templar barking the command.

"Is there a problem, Ser?" he asks softly. He lets a little bit of a tremor slip into his voice - he tells himself it isn't out of character for a regular person to be afraid of a templar. That little tremor of fear flares into terror when he quickly recognizes that this isn't just _any _templar. It's clear in the Ferelden accent still audible in the man's voice, he even looks the same - a little bit older, but still the same. This is Cullen. Knight Captain Cullen, second only to the Knight Commander, almost in charge of this whole prison. And perhaps the _one _templar in this whole Maker-forsaken town who is capable of recognizing Anders by sight.

And recognize him he does. Cullen's eyes widen, and his fingers wrap tightly around the sword hilt at his hip.

Anders swallows hard. "_Please_," he begs. He doesn't trust himself to keep control if Cullen does what Anders thinks he's about to. He can already feel the mana gathering, underneath his skin. It takes _years_ of carefully practiced willpower to keep any of it from slipping. He can see the templar sweating, aware of the static discharge gathering around the mage. Not visible to any senses but that magical awareness that they share. Not visible, but there all the same.

"What're you doing here?" Cullen asks. His voice is hard and dangerous now. He's grown up. They both have.

"Nothing," Anders replies. _His_ voice is soft, and meek, and Maker, it _kills_ him how close it is to begging, but he can't go back. He _won't_.

Cullen's eyes flickers over him. Anders holds his breath, hating that he has to trust this man. Again. "I've heard rumors of a healer in Darktown," the templar says, soft and serious. "That's you?"

It's not _exactly _a question, but Anders nods. "Please," he repeats. His voice is more steady now. He feels stronger, more confident. He's no longer a helpless teenage boy. And maybe Cullen sees that. Or maybe he feels like he owes something to the tentative friendship they used to have.

"Get out of here," Cullen growls. And then he adds, more softly: "Be careful."

Anders nods. He almost runs. He can feel the pressure of the Knight Captain's attention: Cullen is watching him, _only _him. But he stops anyway, a few steps away from the man's post. "Cullen," he murmurs, so softly that it's only a guess whether the other man can even hear him. "You be careful too?"

The templar gives him a serious nod, and Anders retreats from the Gallows. He doesn't feel like he's gained anything. But then he hasn't lost anything either. And that might be saying a lot.

A few days later, a scrawled note sealed with unmarked red wax comes to him, delivered by a barefoot street urchin he rewards with a small bit of cheese. The girl swallows her prize quicker than any mouse, then disappears. Anders waits until he is all alone before he opens the letter. He wonders if he should be surprised by the frankness with which Cullen spills forth the troubling secrets of his new home. The kind of alliance they'd had back in Kinloch Hold - if it could even be called that - it's enough to have the man executed for treason here in Kirkwall. _Meredith is harsh, _Cullen writes. _But you knew that. She is uncompromising, even cruel…_

Anders chews on his lower lip as he reads. Every word makes him feel worse. And more certain of the path he's choosing. And it does _feel _like a choice. He answers Cullen's written-down misgivings with images of his own, drawings and pictures, snatches of darkness and blood. People should _know _about what really goes on behind those walls and bars. He tells himself that if people really knew, then they would care. _They have to care_. These are their children.

_So what? _whisper the nagging doubts inside his head. _Nobody cared about you._

He tells that voice to shut up. He's gotten fairly good at it, through the years of silence.

He flicks the pen he isn't using against the table, watching the ink spatter at the edges of that scrap of parchment. He doesn't write anything. He knows any answer he might give Cullen, on paper, won't ever be sent. It could be intercepted. It could be traced back. He can't risk it.

He pulls his cloak over his head and finds the man standing guard at the Gallows. "I never asked for your help, before," he murmurs. Cullen studies him, his face a blank mask of seriousness. Anders takes a breath and presses on, knowing that even though he'd never _asked_, once upon a time, this templar had freely offered him help he didn't deserve. And this isn't _for _him. He meets Cullen's eyes, risking everything. It's worth it. He knows it, to the core of his being. This isn't about his own survival anymore. "Now I'm asking."


	10. Chapter 10

The girl sits alone, looking fragile and tiny, curled up in the corner of Anders' clinic. She still wears Circle robes, torn and ill-fitting. "I'll find you something else to wear," Anders murmurs. He moves around with aimless urgency, uncertain of what he's supposed to say. He's never seen running away from this angle before.

He's halfway through digging through drawers and baskets and boxes before he realizes… "I don't have any clothes for girls." He slams the door closed and spins around.

"That's okay. I'll just…"

"You can't wear that," he insists, nodding at the mage robes. "Here." Anders shoves one of his shirts at the girl. As she slips it over her head, Anders tries not to notice the bruises and scratches scattered over her pale skin.

She stares at him as much as she can without actually making eye contact. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do," she finally admits, her voice breaking.

Anders clears his throat awkwardly as he casts a simple warming spell on a pot of water. The girl jumps as soon as she feels the mana beginning to actively flow. Anders slowly shuts down the spell, letting the magic bleed away gradually, as he pours a cup of tea for the girl. "You don't have to be afraid of me," he promises. She's so young. Too young for this life he's forced on her without even asking if she wanted it. But there's no going backward from this choice.

"So I'm an apostate now," she says softly, testing the words on her tongue. They die quickly in the silent air.

"Yeah, I'm… sorry."

The girl shrugs. Choices have been made for her for so long that this just seems like another in a long line. He gets that.

She ignores the mug of tea he's put in front of her, but Anders won't try to force her to drink it. Instead, he begins packing up the kind of food that will last a while, enough to sustain her wherever she goes from here. Where is she supposed to go from here? He doesn't think things through. He never has.

"What's your name?" he finally asks, because talking gives him something to do.

"Arleigh," the girl replies, after a long moment. Her voice hasn't gotten any louder than the rough whisper she started with. She only answers direct questions.

Anders' stomach hurts, his whole body sings with primal fear, a recognition of a kindred spirit. How old is she? Twelve? Thirteen? He sighs. "Did you… want out?" he asks carefully. Arleigh shrugs. Anders recognizes a nonverbal deflection when he sees one. Or maybe she really isn't sure. He understands that too. "You don't have to lie to me," he tells her gently. "You can tell me what really happened to you."

"I don't really feel like talking about it," she mutters. "No offense."

Anders nods. "I understand," he says simply.

He knows plenty of people who _say _that, but he means it, and Arleigh relaxes slightly as she lets herself believe the truth of his words. Her hands wrap around the still-warm mug full of tea, though she still doesn't drink it. She glances up, frowning at Anders, trying to figure out if she can trust him, and how much. Her dark brown eyes seem to pierce through him, reading him as easily as an open book. "Anyway, you already know what happened, don't you."

"Not your specific details. I know enough."

Arleigh nods again. It's amazing how much she can say without making eye contact. "You were there, weren't you?"

"Not the Gallows. But yes, I've been where you are." He pulls up the sleeve of his shirt to show her the phylactery scar, and she nods in immediate recognition.

"I wasn't trying to escape," she insists. "I didn't want to. I don't know… I mean… why me? It's not _fair_."

"You were the one we could get to," Anders replies honestly.

"So what, it was just… random luck?"

"No. It wasn't." Kai's voice breaks through the quiet little bubble between Anders and Arleigh. His sudden presence sends Arleigh into a violent and instinctively reactive fight or flight mode. Anders can feel her magic spiking, and he lashes out instinctively, pulling her power into himself. They both are breathing heavily, and Arleigh's hands are clenched into tight fist. He's taken away her ability to fight with magic, so she fights physically. But she's a twelve year old kid, and as soon as Anders wraps his arms around her, she stops struggling. Her breathing still comes in sporadic, choking gasps.

"I'm sorry," he croons gently. The mana drain has left Arleigh weak and shaken. And somehow he has to convince her that she's still safe with him.

Kai lets the door to the clinic slam shut behind him as he steps inside. He watches Arleigh's reaction with wide eyes. He's clearly in over his head. He shuffles his feet, and ducks his head. His eyes flicker to Anders. "She's okay, isn't she?" he whines.

Arleigh pulls herself out of Anders' arms. "I'm fine," she snaps. Kai licks his lips, and nods, accepting her words even if he clearly doesn't believe them. Arleigh looks him up and down, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. "So you're the one who… what? Rescued me."

"I didn't know what else to do!"

"I never asked for help."

"Yes, you did," Kai insists. "You let me see you."

Arleigh doesn't say anything else. She doesn't confirm or deny Kai's self-congratulatory heroism. She doesn't thank him, either of them. She looks terrified. "What happens now?" she finally asks.

Kai, who is _also _just a child, casts a glance at Anders.

"I'll find you somewhere safe to go," Anders replies immediately. "I promise, Arleigh."

"Okay," she replies.

Anders quickly packs a bag with as many of his old clothes as he can fit, and as much food as he can part with. After a long moment of consideration, he slips in a vial of magebane. Arleigh's eyes widen when she sees it. "Just in case," Anders promises.

Arleigh's small fingers close around the vial, and she stuffs it deeper into the bag. "Just in case," she repeats.

Anders watches her go, knowing that the note hidden inside the pile of clothes he'd given her will steer her to safety. If he doesn't know where she is he can't accidentally give her location away. In the future, he knows, it's better if he stays out of these kinds of rescue missions completely.

_Wow_, he thinks, as he sits down. He's thinking about a future full of rescue missions, and the image fits so easily in his head.

"So I still don't get to see her?" Kai asks. The boy watches Anders warily from another unused cot.

"She's not safe here, Kai." This is good. Reminding himself of the dangers, the _reality _of the situation, that's what Anders needs to do. This was a one time thing. It does not signal a trend. He's no hero. Heroes get people killed.

"That's not _fair_! That's what they said before!"

"Before?"

"When the templars came. They said they had to take her away so she'd be safe. She's not _dangerous_."

"Maybe," Anders hedges. "But she's in danger. Kai, she can't stay here. You have to know that."

"Yeah. I know that."

"You… really like her, don't you? She's more than just a friend."

Kai nods. "I've known her forever. Since we were little. She was the only friend I ever had."

* * *

><p>The clinic feels quiet, now that Kai and Arleigh are gone. Anders still feels responsible for the girl - for both of them, really. He lays on his cot, staring up at the dark ceiling. He knows he wouldn't be able to fall asleep even if he wanted to. <em>You let me see you<em>. Anders rolls onto his stomach, reaching under his bed and pulling out a stack of loose parchment and a bit of charcoal. He blows off the worst of the dust. Biting his lip, he lets the worst of his own memories and his fears of Arleigh's truth carry his fingers over the paper. He presses down hard lines, shades in black shadows and piercing bright lights. Children cowering in darkened cells, the enchanted antimagic handcuffs locked so tightly around their wrists that they left behind blood and weeping blisters, the grief of mothers and the wordless terror of the children pulled from their arms. Tally lines carved into stone walls or wooden bunks. Enforced silence. Empty prayers.

Untold hours pass as Anders tries to make people _see_, the only way he knows how. Nobody's ever listened before, but somehow it feels different now.

He nearly jumps out of his skin at the sound of a loud pounding on the door. He curses himself for not paying enough attention, then reminds himself that templars wouldn't knock. He sits up, crinkling small mountains of paper and tangled bedsheets as he does. "Be right there!" he yells. "Ow." He curses again as he trips over a small bench. His shin throbs with residual pain, and he limps slightly as he yanks open the door.

"I brought you some food," Lirene announces proudly, holding out a bowl.

"It looks good. Smells good."

"You don't have to act so surprised."

"I'm not. I'm… what're you doing here?"

"Just came to talk," Lirene promises.

She sets out a couple of chairs and sets the bowl full of soup in front of Anders. He runs his spoon through it, and then takes a sip. The steam wafts into his face, warming him from the outside in. He closes his eyes and breathes it in: onions, broth, spices… "Did you get a real chicken from somewhere?"

"Just eat."

He does, knowing that it'll be easier just to do what she says than listen to her badgering him into finally following her friendly orders. Lirene is stubbornly kind, taking care of everyone around her whether they want her to or not. Just like someone else he used to know. The soup tastes even better than it smells. It feels good to eat something without having to feel guilty about it.

"Hey, what's this?"

He looks up, feeling his stomach constrict as he recognizes what Lirene is looking at. Why hadn't he hidden those drawings? Or burned them. Nobody's supposed to see that stuff; it's so raw and broken. _He's_ raw and broken.

"Nothing."

"Did you draw these? … Anders, they're really good."

He shakes his head. What is she talking about? Why doesn't she understand? Doesn't she _see_? Lirene recognizes his discomfort, of course she does. She takes care of people, every waking moment. "Anders, come here."

It's a soft invitation, but Anders feels himself drawn toward it, pulled in by the promise of someone who might care. He sits down on his bed, next to her, close enough to touch, although they don't. Lirene smooths down a flat space in the blankets, and she spreads his drawings out, _showing _him the things he's committed to paper. "Is this what's happened to you?"

"Not just me," he hedges.

Lirene closes her eyes. Her fingernail flicks at a bright white Chantry sun. She taps a sporadic rhythm, then opens her eyes again. Anders swears he can actually feel the breath that she's holding. There's something inside him that wants to reach out, but that urge is buried deep; it feels dangerous. He folds his fingers into a loose fist instead, and tucks his hair behind his ear with his free hand. He watches her, waiting. They sit together in the silence of a held breath, but Anders has never been especially good at sitting still. Lirene stirs when he does, although her fingers still remain clenched tightly around the paper in her hand, half-crumpled into a ball. When she starts talking, it's so quiet that Anders doesn't immediately recognize that he needs to listen. It takes him a moment to check in. "Everyone around me just… tried to pretend she'd died. But worse than that. Like she'd never existed at all. And here I am, with this… hole. This emptiness inside that I'm not even allowed to talk about."

A swirl of emotions tangles in the pit of his stomach. She's talking to him. "Your… daughter?" He's guessing, but there's something broken in her that reaches something in him. He barely remembers his mother, but that empty hole hasn't gone away, not from Lirene's life and not from his either. "Your daughter's a mage?"

She nods. "Mira."

Mira. A little girl with dark hair, good with ice. She volunteered to help with the storage rooms even when nobody asked her to. "I… knew her," he chokes out, carefully.

He could lie. How would she know? He doesn't want to tell the truth. Not when he sees the spark of hope flickering in Lirene's eyes. How can he be the one to kill that?

"What happened to her? Tell me. Tell me the truth."

"I… can't." he insists. He's begging her not to push it, he doesn't want to.

"_Please_, Anders. I have to know."

Anders closes his eyes again, struggling to breathe. He doesn't look at Lirene as he talks. He looks at the drawings instead. The stained glass windows of the chapel, the rough waves of the lake crashing against the tower's rocky shore. "They made you a promise they had no intention of keeping," he insists. He doesn't even try to hide the bitterness from his tone. "They told you they'd keep your child safe. Teach her. That she'd grow up to be somebody." He knows all of this, he's pieced together the story from a dozen conversations scattered over the years. Lirene doesn't answer, but she hardly has to. "Is that why you're doing this? Helping me?"

"I'm helping people because people need help."

"But you feel guilty."

"Of course I do! I let them take my daughter from me and now she's…"

"She's dead," Anders fills in. He tries to tell her gently, but he can barely choke the words out, so it comes out sounding harsh and angry. He expects Lirene to flinch, or retaliate, but she just sits, still as a statue. Something flickers across her face, a held-in grief. But she doesn't look surprised. "She did it herself. I mean, there's that, I guess." It hurts how easy it is to talk about suicide. He can't look at Lirene while he does it, and he's not sure anymore if he's talking about a girl he'd barely known, or himself. "It happened a lot," he insists. "More than anyone ever wants to admit."

Lirene nods. She's not looking at him either. Anders knows enough to recognize the way she pulls away, struggling to process everything he's just told her. It's like a part of her has shut down. "Thank you," she mumbles. Her voice is hollow, broken. "Thank you for telling me."

Anders nods too. He has absolutely no idea what he's supposed to say. Lirene flips through his drawings, studying them carefully, every detail. She takes it all in and says nothing. "People should know," she finally declares.

"What?"

"It's not fair that they get away with this. It's not fair that no one knows the truth."

Anders can't help it. He starts to laugh, until he's shaking, and tears sting his eyes. He realizes the complete inappropriateness of the response, but he can't help it. The laughter isn't humorous, it's bitter. An over-the-top reaction to the ridiculous naivety of the statement. But there's something in him that still hurts - the part of him that wants to believe it's possible. That people might listen. That the world could be fair.

"Are you okay?" he finally asks. Lirene shrugs. She's not, but she's been carrying this grief inside her for so long that it feels… not good, but _right_, to have it confirmed.

"Was she right, do you think? That death was her best option?"

"I don't know," Anders replies honestly.

"Maker," Lirene breathes. It's just an expression, but it startles Anders all the same. It's the first time he's heard her make even a token reference to faith of any kind. Maybe it's just something you say when you don't know what else to say. But maybe it's a plea for help.

"Do you believe in it? Any of it? The Chantry?"

She shrugs. "I don't know, maybe. It's a hard habit to shake."

"Yeah. I know what you mean."

Slowly, carefully, he gathers up the drawings she's been fixating on. In deference to her unspoken suggestion, he tucks them away inside a hidden drawer rather than just lighting them on fire the way he usually would.

"Did you get Arleigh out of here?" he finally asks.

Lirene holds his gaze for a long moment, then shakes her head. "She didn't want to go."

"What do you mean, she didn't want to go?"

"She's got family here, Anders, she grew up here. She's not like us."

Panic seizes, tight fingers squeezing around his heart, making it hard to breathe. His eyes squeeze shut as he tries to fight the pain behind his skull.

"Hey," Lirene grabs his wrist, feeling his pulse fluttering under his skin. "Calm down." Her fingers run through his tangled hair, helping to center him. He sighs, and reaches out for his stash of vials, searching for something that'll help him stay calm help him think straight… Lirene closes her fingers overtop of his, wrestling him away from the drugs. "What in the Void do you think you're doing?" she hisses.

"She'll get killed," he mumbles, incoherently. "She doesn't know… I have to find her!"

"She knows how to hide, Anders," Lirene soothes. "She won't waste the chance you've given her."

"She's just a kid."

"How old was Mira?"

Anders settles, leaning his head back against the rough splintered wood of the clinic's makeshift wall. He sighs. He doesn't answer, but he doesn't have to. How old was Mira? Fifteen, and staring down a life without a future, with nothing but memories of a life where nobody wanted her.

The aching in Anders' gut doesn't go away. He _knows_ Lirene, he trusts her, but it's hard now not to look at her and see another mother who did nothing to protect her child from the Chantry's oppression.

"Do you want me to go?" she asks. Anders shakes his head, even though he thinks that might be exactly what he wants. Lirene pats his arm, and gives him a tired smile. She stays with him, because he needs someone to. How could he blame her, even for a second, for what happened to Mira? Lirene couldn't stop the Chantry from taking her child, and she's spent the rest of her life making up for it, taking care of people who don't have anybody else. He's directing his blame in the wrong direction. It's not her fault.

"You're right," he announces. "People should know the truth. We have to tell the truth, we have to fight them."

"Fight the Chantry?"

"We've already started, haven't we?"

Lirene finally nods. "Yes. I suppose we have."


	11. Chapter 11

Callin huddles in the cold, shivering, surrounded by rough stone and rusted bars. Slippery mold slides under her fingers. She scowls at the emptiness, keeping herself alert and tense. A woman in Guard armor, with harsh features and tightly braided red hair, opens the cell and stares down at the younger girl. Callin says nothing. She doesn't honestly care what happens to her. They might kill her, for the crimes she's committed. It doesn't seem likely though. It's the first time she's been caught.

"I could send you to the Gallows," the woman says, in a clipped, business-like tone.

Callin swallows hard, and tries not to let her panic show. Okay, maybe she does care after all. But she said _could_. It isn't certain, not yet. There's an itch crawling up her spine, she can't scratch it with her wrists bound tightly by cold metal, anti-magic cuffs.

"What do you want from me?" Callin asks softly.

The guard frowns, and sighs. Callin tracks her movement as she paces on the other side of the cell. "I need your help," the woman finally admits, and now it's Callin's turn to frown.

"I'm not in the habit of helping the Guard."

"And I'm not in the habit of asking mercenary apostates for help, so I guess this will be a leap of faith for both of us."

Callin chews on her lower lip as she studies the guard and weighs her options. The woman's Ferelden. That's weird enough, isn't it? Since when does the Kirkwall Guard hire refugees? "You want Athenril," she guesses.

The guard starts to laugh. "I'd be lying if I said the idea doesn't hold some appeal, but no. Athenril is a useful foil for the Coterie. Removing her would cause more problems than it solves."

"So what _do_ you want?"

"Eyes in Lowtown. Darktown… Don't look at me like that, I'm trying to keep people safe, same as you."

"And you think it's _safe_ for me to be an informant? No offense, but I'm not half as afraid of you as I am of -"

"Athenril?"

Callin grinds her teeth. She doesn't want to admit it, but it's true. Athenril's network is not as large or entrenched as the Coterie, but Callin is indentured to the elven criminal all the same. The fragile balance of _her_ life isn't safe if the smuggler thinks her loyalty is anything but absolute. As it is, there will be punishment for speaking to the law at all. And of course Athenril will know about it. She keeps tabs on her people, only an idiot wouldn't. "I can't," Callin whispers.

The woman sighs, sounding almost apologetic. "Give me _something_, girl. I can't keep the templars away forever."

"So you're blackmailing me."

"I'm using the tools I have. Can you blame me?"

No. How could she? They _all _use the tools they have. "Maybe I'd _rather _go to the Circle."

"I can't believe that. You've sacrificed too much already to keep yourself free."

"I'm not going to risk _everything_ just to get nothing in return."

"I'm not offering you nothing. I will keep you safe. Turn a blind eye to you and the other apostates you harbor."

"I'm not -"

"You're no good at lying, little girl. Don't try."

Callin clamps her mouth shut, trying to ignore the discomfort of tense muscles and tight shackles.

"I know you don't believe me, but we are on the same side. I have no love for the templars. They act without consequence, no one will go up against them. They _own _this town. And that does not sit well with me."

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"What you're already doing. With official sanction. Financial support. Physical protection, if you want it."

"You mean like… a bodyguard?"

"If that's what you want to call it."

"I work alone," Callin mutters.

"That's not what I've seen. You travel with an elven assassin. And, oh, the nobles are starting to tell stories about that one." Callin scowls, but she offers the guard no confirmation or denial. The woman is clearly well-researched, but it's not like the apostate needs to make her job any easier. "You've got as long as I can keep the templars at bay to give me your answer," the woman reminds her, and Callin can't help but notice that she offers no indication of exactly how soon that will be.

"I'll do it," she agrees. What other choice does she have?

The woman smiles, and casually unlocks the door to the cell, before crouching down to key open the magical shackles binding Callin's wrists behind her back. The sudden flow of returning mana makes her lightheaded, and blood rushes back into tingling fingers. "Thanks," she mutters, although she recieves no reply. Not that she'd expected one.

She doesn't head back to the alienage right away, wanting instead to build herself a buffer of time to figure out a plan: for what to tell Athenril, for what to do with her life. She pushes her way into The Hanged Man. Drinks here are cheap and plentiful, quality aside, and she can usually talk her way into getting most of hers free. Sometimes, there's even food, and her stomach aches with a familiar emptiness.

The dwarven storyteller waves her over, a huge grin on his face. Callin rolls her eyes, but she joins him at his table, knowing that all she has to do is listen to his winding overexaggerated tales and shrug off his questions and he'll likely buy her a full meal. The exchange looks promising already, as he slides a full tankard of ale across the table to her before she's even sat down.

"What do you want?" she asks suspiciously, already pulling out a knife to cut the meat on her plate… is this really _steak_? She shoves a large chunk of it into her mouth before the dwarf can change his mind about giving it to her. Varric chuckles.

"Are you always this suspicious, Little Hawk?"

"It's kept me alive so far."

"Well, I can't argue that."

"What do you want?" Callin repeats, the words muffled by her chewing.

"I'm having a little trouble with the Coterie."

"So?"

"So I'm asking for your help to keep them out of my interests."

"This isn't my problem," she demands. The food is _amazing_. She can't remember the last time she had meat of any kind, much less an entire portion with not even a little bit of it spoiling. She didn't even know the cooks at The Hanged Man could make anything like this. She looks the dwarf over once more, taking in the gold chain around his neck, the embroidered sleeves and color of his fine shirt. He has money, certainly. How did she never notice that before?

"You fight Coterie all the time," Varric points out. "It's not even like you'd be going out of your way."

Callin growls, relunctantly setting down her fork and knife while there's still food on the plate. She holds the dwarf's steady gaze. "Contrary to what seems to be _everyone's _opinion, I'm not exactly eager to get myself killed!"

Varric sighs, apparently in one of his rare moments of contemplative seriousness. "I don't think we have much of a choice, do you? This city's a shithole. Wouldn't you rather go down fighting?"

"I… don't know." Something flips in her stomach as she admits it. That's all she's been trying to do for years now, isn't it? Go down fighting. But there are people in this city who, for whatever reason, believe that she's capable of something better. She can fight _for_ something, instead of just surviving. And wouldn't that be worth it?

Varric smirks as he sees the wheels turning in her head. "'Preciate the help, Hawk."

"I didn't say I'd help you," she scowls.

"I know. But you will."

She rolls her eyes and leaves the table, with her belly full but none of her worries alleviated. Fenris is waiting for her when she enters Athenril's lair. The slum dwelling is hardly intimidating, but it helps Callin to refer to it as a 'lair' just the same. The elf sits in the corner of the cluttered front room, eyes on the door. He's cleaning his sword, and his lyrium tattoos give off a gentle blue glow in the darkness. "Where've you been?" he asks, as casually as he ever asks anything, which means that the words are laced with threat.

"None of your business," Callin mutters. Fenris says nothing, but he flashes her a grin.

"'Thenril's been looking for you."

No doubt. Callin squares her shoulders and heads into the elven criminal's private quarters, figuring it's better just to confront things head on rather than wait for the woman to come to her. So what if she's angry? She's been angry before, and Callin's survived.

But Athenril isn't angry at all. "It's the street game," she smirks. "Guard wants information from down below, give 'em information. But you pick what they hear. You got it?"

Callin stares at the smuggler, realizing for maybe the first time that for Athenril to carve out the foothold she has in this city, she has to be more than intimidating: she has to be very, very smart. She nods. Athenril smiles. "That's my girl."

She runs her fingers along Callin's shoulderblades and leans in, to whisper in her ear. Callin can smell the scent of her perfume, something made from flowers that grow out on the mountain; some elvish thing. "I have missed you, da'mi."

Callin squirms. But something kindles in her belly all the same. "You're not mad at me?" she asks cautiously. Her employer's moods are confusing and erratic. Callin has learned that she cannot fight them, only adjust to them, like the weather. Athenril laughs, and pulls the human girl close. Her lips brush across Callin's, and her fingers dance across the mage's skin. "I'm not mad at you," the smuggler confirms.

* * *

><p>Anders hides among the crowd, placing himself at the edge of the huddled masses in case he needs to run, but he forces himself to stand still and bow his head as the Divine recites her sermon. The sun is barely breaking through the horizon outside. He feels barely awake. He glances around, noting the templars, most of them clustered in the first few rows of worshipers. Others stand behind the alter, an honor guard. None of them so much as looks his way, and he allows himself to smile. He relaxes slightly as the music begins, hymns to the Maker, bits of the Chant set to music. Soft candlelight flickers nearby. He wonders what it would be like to feel safe here. An itchy restlessness fills him, the exact <em>opposite<em> of what he's supposed to feel, he knows, but it's too long in a confined space, even a large one, even though he comes here by choice.

He jumps as something… some_one_ crashes into his leg. A little girl, standing no taller than his knee, gasps and steps backward, crashing into the woman standing in front of them.

"Sit _still_," a muscular man hisses. He lifts the girl up by her arm, depositing her roughly in front of him, effectively trapping her with his own body. She glowers and rubs at the bruised flesh where she'd grabbed him. But she says nothing, and remains still.

"She meant no harm," Anders says softly.

"She needs to learn to mind," the man rumbles. Anders stuffs his hands into his pockets and waits for the bells that end the service and release them all into the city.

"You're Ferelden," he announces needlessly.

The girl's father grunts. "What's it ta you?"

Anders shrugs, and licks his lips, keeping his head down to avoid attention the way all of the refugees have learned to do. "You looking for work?"

"You got some?"

"Maybe. I dunno for sure, but I've heard something about a man hiring miners to work the pits outside the city."

"Dangerous work."

"Good coin. Better than starving."

"That it is." He holds out his hand for Anders to shake, and the mage returns the greeting. The man's handshake is firm and strong. Anders knows he'll do well, given the opportunity to work. He can provide for his family. Maybe things will work out for them. "My name's Darren," the man grunts.

Anders smiles. "I guess we have to stick together," he tells the man. He knows that the people of Kirkwall lump all of the Ferelden refugees together. It makes him feel like he's got something in common with these people, despite spending most of his life in Ferelden hidden away in a tower. He wonders if this man would hate him if he knew what he really was. He wishes he didn't have to lie about it, even by omission. It would be nice if a simple conversation didn't have to be a minefield.

"Stick together," Darren replies, with a tired smile. "It's a damn sure thing that no one else will."

Anders smiles too, and the little girl at her father's feet grins up at him. "You're nice," she declares.

"I try," Anders admits. If only it were that easy.

When he gets back to the clinic, Callin is pacing nervously around the empty room. The lantern outside remains lit even in the daytime, piercing through the ever-present twilight of Darktown, but even still, he hadn't expected her to just let herself inside. "What are you doing here?" he asks guardedly.

"I don't know," she admits. Anders frowns. He coaxes her to sit down in a nearby chair, and he sits down across from her - pointedly not close enough to touch. He studies her, the way her eyebrows knit together as she thinks, the way her fingers twitch because she's nervous. She _looks _calm, but he knows what it's like to never be able to let your guard down completely. As if responding to his thoughts, she looks up, leaning back in the chair as she does so. "I never really figured I'd meet another mage," she admits softly. "Someone like me. And I thought if I did, it wouldn't matter. But it _does_. Anders, I watch what you do here, and it makes me want to… do better. Be better. I don't want to have to hide anymore."

There is so much determination inside of her petite frame that she can't seem to contain it. Anders can practically feel it blossoming out from her, waves of powerful emotion drawing mana to the surface of her skin. He catches his breath, remembering for a minute another girl who used to act so much the same. These little girls who want to save the world… that was never him. Heroes get themselves killed, and he values his life. Doesn't he?

"Here," Callin says, handing him a letter. Anders looks it over, frowning down at the wax seal; a smudged imprint of the Chantry sun. "I didn't open it," Callin protests. As if that's what he's worried about.

He uses his fingernail to break through to the stiff parchment inside. It crinkles as he unfolds it, revealing several pages of carefully penned documents. His breath catches somewhere in his lungs as he starts to read. "Do you know what this is?" he asks, as fear and awe mingle within his blood, somewhere in the pit of his stomach.

"No," Callin replies easily. She's only half paying attention to him; most of her focus is on the stray kitten that's nibbling at one of her boot laces. "What is it?" she asks, looking up.

Instead of trying to explain it, he simply hands her the documents, but she doesn't have the experiences or frames of reference that she does. The templars' orders don't seem coded to him, but he'd grown up in the same world, learning how to dodge the veiled threats that were so much more frightening than the things they said out loud. "It's… proof," he says simply. "It's proof that they're using the Rite of Tranquility illegally. If we take this to the Divine, she can't ignore it!"

Callin frowns. "You want to… talk to the Divine? Just… walk up to her and have a conversation?"

Anders sighs, trying to think. "I _can_," he finally decides. "There's sanctuary, even for us. They can't stop mages from praying."

"They can stop _apostates_ from praying. The Divine is surrounded by templars! Even if she wanted to listen to you, and why would she?"

"I have to try!" he insists. Because he thinks he know who smuggled in the letters - well, journal pages, more accurately, long pages of familiar handwriting addressed to him but never intended to be delivered. He runs his fingers over the tightly looping scrawl; it's Karl. All of his observations and fears and questions and doubts, recorded, until they suddenly just… stop.

"Do you know what Tranquility _is_?" he asks Callin.

"It's when they take away your magic," Callin whispers. The reverence in her words proves to Anders that she rightly fears it.

"They take away everything," Anders confirms. "I'd rather be dead."

Callin nods, and although she retreats into herself, Anders can feel swirls of her power, clinging close to her skin, a layer of something invisible that he can neither touch nor break through. He can't imagine her without it, that crackling fire _is _her. She's spent her entire life trying to keep it contained, hidden. Trying to keep it bottled up is killing her, and he may be the only one who sees it. "Come on," he whispers, leaning close into her ear. She's tense, she doesn't trust him - she doesn't trust anybody, but curiosity overpowers her.

"Where're we going?" she asks.

Anders helps her to her feet. "We're going to be the opposite of Tranquil."

He takes her out to the coast, where the waves crash against the rocks, so loudly that they have to shout to be heard over it. Callin casts a nervous glance at him, and he doesn't miss the way she keeps her eyes open, her body constantly moving, alert for threats. They're alone out here though; the wind is frigid, and there's nothing out here but sea and sky. "Show me what you can do," Anders tells her.

He feels the thrill of mana surging up in her, as she calls to the primal forces that flicker just on the other side of the Veil. Callin casts a nervous glance back at him, but when he shows no visible reaction, she squares her shoulders and pretends he isn't there at all. She picks a point at random, a large stone breaking the shoreline about fifty yards away. As Anders watches, a ball of flame erupts, quickly growing until in consumes the stone. The flame still flickers even after the girl stops actively casting, although without her making an effort to sustain it, the crashing sea quickly douses the fire.

"Firestarter," Anders says simply, repeating what he's heard. Callin smiles up at him, and nods. "Where're you from?" he asks her. She narrows her eyes, suspicious but pulled in all at the same time. He _sees _her. She doesn't have to run away from him, or guard herself. Maybe she should, but she… _can't_, anymore. She's too tired.

"I'm kinda from everywhere," she tells him, and Anders nods. She's an apostate, just like him. They're from everywhere and nowhere. "I'm… from Kirkwall, I guess." She shrugs. "We came here when I was a kid. After my father.. died."

Anders notices the hiccup there, feels the anger flaring inside of her, igniting a spike of power that Callin releases in a wash of static sparks. She raises an eyebrow, daring him to call her out on it. He shakes his head. He understands what it is to be angry. In him the reflex is too ingrained; he stifles himself, afraid of punishment. It's refreshing to see someone who is comfortable with her own power, who uses it to ensure her own survival. There is too much fear tied up in being a mage. Callin is afraid of a lot of things, but her own power is not one of them. Anders needs more of that fearlessness in his life. If they're going to change anything, he cannot be afraid of punishment. Not anymore.


End file.
